Day 155, Year 1: Doug and Sylvia of Windcastle Visit Puerto Ayoro
Date: Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Weather at Anchorage: No Change–sunny, clear blue skies
Daytime Air Temperature: No Change–82 degrees F daytime
Water Temperature: No Change–77 degrees F
Location: Academy Bay, Puerto Ayoro, Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos
Today was another day with no big exploration, but we are ever amazed what a walk down the main street in Puerto Ayoro produces. Today’s find was the sea lions that frolic and then laze about on a local fishing boat that we pass every time we take the water taxi to town. If you don’t look closely, as we hadn’t on previous days, you would just think that there were piles of black trash bags on the boat under the wooden cover. But on closer observation, the “piles” move and when you zoom in, you see that there are sea lions piled on top of each other. That’s the way the wildlife is here. Animals you can see no where else in the world are right under your feet right in town. We constantly find this unbelievable, but are enjoying every moment. We also found a small heron in town that let me walk right up to him or her. The new identification book I bought today would tell me that this was a young Yellow-crowned Night Heron, but they are supposed to be out only at night. Maybe this one was confused. We walked a little further to some shops on the water, and there we found another “pile” of sea lions. In the next block, we walked out to the water between the ATM machines and the bank, and as always in that location, there are beautiful, bright red Sally Lightfoot Crabs and marine iguanas. You would truly have to be blind not to find wildlife here everywhere.
I have one correction to Saturday’s log. I said, “Just like our iguana friend, we headed away from the water and down the path that would take us back to the ranger station. We observed more birds and the ever present geckos on our way. These little geckos are seen climbing over and between the volcanic rock that is everywhere on this island.” When I bought the new ID book today, I learned that these were lava lizards, not geckos.
Our friends from Windcastle, Sylvia and Doug, came over from San Cristobal today on a small inter-island shuttle. We had lunch with them and are getting ready to go back into town to have dinner with them. They head back to their boat in Wreck Bay, San Cristobal tomorrow. They will be leaving the Galapagos before us, so this will be our last chance to see each other before our crossing to the Marquesas. We have really enjoyed getting to know them and hope to see them somewhere in the South Pacific.
We will be here in Puerto Ayora for ten days. Our daughter, Heather, and her husband Jed, arrive here on Friday of this week and on Sunday, we will leave Windbird to board a tour boat, Sullidae, for a five day cruise of the islands. We return here to Academy Bay, Santa Cruz, on Thursday, March 30. We will enjoy Puerto Ayoro for one more day on Friday, go to the fruit and vegetable market on Saturday morning (everything brought in fresh from mainland Ecuador once a week), and then take off for Isla Isabella. It is the largest island in the Galapagos, but the most sparsely populated. Heather and Jed will be with us for our sail to Isabella, then on to Floreana, and finally back to Santa Cruz on Monday, April 10. Heather and Jed fly back to the US on Tuesday, April 12, and we will then decide when we will leave the Galapagos headed for the Marquesas. Sometime in mid-April we will have to pull ourselves away from here, but if we continue to enjoy this wonderful place as much as we have so far, it will be very hard to leave.
I have mentioned Randy and Sherri from Procyon in our logs. They are some the “forty-somethings” traveling around the world. Other than the “twenty-somethings” from Audentes and Geodesic, Randy is definitely the most fit looking male we have met. And right now he is in the hospital here, on a 24-hour watch, with the possibility of having to be air-lifted to the mainland of Ecuador. He has had stomach problems for about four days now, but the pain became too much today and they had to go into the hospital. We are keeping him constantly in our thoughts and hope that all will be fine. But it is a reminder that you never know when you might have health issues. Age and fitness don’t seem to be the determiner. Who knows what is? All we know is that we certainly hope Randy is up and about tomorrow, and that things will be fine.
It’s time to head into shore for dinner, so I’ll sign off for tonight. Tomorrow we are planning a trip to Media Luna in the highlands, so our experiences from that trip will be in tomorrow’s log.
