Hammerhead hijinx

Finally the big guniea pig thing...

Agouti - the big guinea pig thing.

I arrived on the the Galapagos Islands Monday and it's been great.  It's either the start or end of the wet season as it's still hot, but it seems to rain most evenings.  But it's ok in the day so that's good.

In my first day or so I met a small but good crew of people to hang out with.  A few people from the US, Israel & Switzerland.  We checked out some beaches, have been diving, seen the giant tortoises, marine iguanas and lava tubes.  All this and I've only seen part of 1 island!

The first night, myself and Richard - a New Yorker I met getting off the plane, went hunting for a cheap hotel and managed to talk a lady down from $45 to $30 a night each for rooms.  We thought we had done well until we met a girl, Sasha, who was staying the same place as us and paying $15 a night.  Ripped!  The next day we asked the guys we were diving with how much they were paying and they were paying $15 and $12 a night!  Obviously we must look like suckers.  That was it, we got off the boat and followed our new friend, Gilard (can you believe I kept forgetting his name), an Isreali dude, to his hotel.  We had a look at the rooms and the standard was the same as our $30 a night rooms, so we switched hotels, never to return, except when I've gone back to the restaurant next door so I can steal their wi-fi ;)

The diving, although somewhat expensive has been amazing.  Turtles, reef sharks, muebla rays, blue-spotted eagle rays, sea lions and hammerheads as well as all the usual small reef fish.

So our second dive on Wednesday was not only one of the best dives I've ever done, but my 50th dive ever!  Towards the end of the dive we saw this big school of hammerheads, then as we were watching them a school of muebla rays swam past, then a huge turtle came swimming through the rays right past us. 

There was so much going on I didn't know where to look.  I probably should have been looking at my air gauge :(  When I finished the dive it was on 0 and my dive buddy, Richard, he had to share the guides air for the last couple of minutes.

We went through air quick in that dive because we went quite deep and there were a lot of strong currents which we had to swim against.  At the end our guide was a bit far away so he banged on his tank to get our attention and for us to follow and then took off.  He was almost out of sight when Richard and I went to go after him, then I realised that the other girl was still watching the sharks and going the opposite direction.  I wasn't sure whether to go after her or get richards attention first, but turned around and saw her and I was low on air so left him to chase her.  So I was left danglling in the middle, trying to wait where they could see me and I could see where the guide was disappearing to.

So we all got back together in a group and did our 3 minute safety stop.  But Richards dive computer said we had to do extra time because we'd gone too deep.  So the guide took the other 2 to the surface then came back to Richard and I who were just hovering in the water waiting to see how long his air would last.  The guide came back just as Richards air ran out, so they shared and I got to keep my diminishing resources to myself.  Longest 9 minutes ever.  Perhaps a little excessive for a safety stop, but better safe than sorry. So yeah, exciting 50th dive.

Turtle

School of blue-spotted eagle rays

School of hammerheads