Wednesday 13th June

Puerto Ayora
Isla Santa Cruz, Galapagos Islands.

0 44.914 S
90 18.417 W

Having put our clocks back an hour yesterday we woke up early today! At least the sun was attempting to shine this morning. We fiddled about on the boat for half the morning with Gerry resealing the bathroom joins (we noticed that the wood work on the outside of the shower was getting wet and assumed there was a leak somewhere in the joints) and me cutting Gerry’s hair and then typing up blog notes and downloading pictures from the camera. We finally managed to get Abigail on the phone and had a chat with her which was good. A little later on, whilst I was still typing Gerry was outside and called out asking if I was ready to go ashore as there was a taxi nearby. I hurriedly saved my document and closed down the computer, gathered my shoes, sun glasses, cash, laundry ticket and locked up the boat, just as the taxi pulled up alongside our boat. We docked and made our way straight to the internet café where we checked email and then I attempted to load some photos from the last 10 days, it took me 11/2 hours and at the end I’m not sure that they have loaded even though it said they have – I’ll have to check it out tomorrow and I’ll be mad if they haven’t as it would be a wasted 11/2 hours.
• note to Ray Lopez – if you really know the guys who flew over us on the 4th June 120 miles off the coast of Colombia is there any chance of getting copies of the photos they took of us? We would like them for our collection! Please email reply (and photos) to svorpailleur@hotmail.com thanks.
By now Gerry’s stomach was rumbling (I don’t think it ever stops!) and we needed to find somewhere for lunch. Just as we were leaving the café Sue and Ross turned up to do their internet stuff for the day, we said hi and then continued on our way. We decided to try the café we had seen Mags and Barry at the day before and I have to say that we had a good lunch and it was reasonably cheap. Just as we were about to leave Mags and Barry showed up – they obviously enjoyed the food there the day before. We sat and chatted with them until their lunch order arrived and then left them to go and retrieve our laundry, unfortunately by the time we got there the place was closed – we would have to collect it later in the afternoon or tomorrow. We stopped for an ice cream and ended up having it with a slice of chocolate cake – not that this will surprise anyone! As we made our way to the taxi dock I took pictures of the statues that dominate the streets – larger than life statues of and Iguana and a blue footed Booby, there is also a large tortoise but that’s at the other end of the main street – I’ll get that one tomorrow. There were several iguanas sunning themselves near the taxi dock, they are quite ugly compared to the ones we saw in Florida; these ones are entirely black and fairly small but they seem reasonably unafraid of people as they just stay put despite people walking by them.
All alone the water’s edge there are hundreds of crabs, they have quite remarkable colouring and patterns on their shells but we are warned not to eat them as there is rat poison spread all over the island that may affect them (I’m pretty certain this is a ploy to preserve the crabs for local industry!) We’ve also been able to spot quite a lot of birds though as yet I haven’t been close enough to get pictures of the blue footed Boobys to go with the red footed ones from the Aves. The birds also seem to be unafraid of humans, especially the pelicans who are cheeky enough to roam along the paths near the fish market. We got a water taxi back out to our boat, as we passed by a couple of trawlers I noticed that there were sea lions sunning themselves on the swim platforms at the back of these boats – they must be fairly athletic to get from the water up onto these platforms. As soon as we got back to our boat Gerry was outside checking to see if there was any damage from our little incident yesterday – apart from some blue paint that they had left behind on our transom edge there appears to be no damage – lucky escape! Shortly after this it began to spit with rain – it had to be time for an afternoon siesta. We resurfaced at about 17.30hrs, caught a water taxi into the dock where we found the place to be alive with people. The foreshore reminds us a bit of Townsville in that it has a
n esplanade similar to the Strand but on a smaller scale, it is complete with walkways, a children’s’ playground, fountain, bench seats, volleyball courts, skateboard ramp, tables and chairs and food vendors there were hundreds of people wandering around, playing volleyball, playing cards or dominos, watching others being energetic and just enjoying the evening. We made a quick dash to the laundry to collect our washing and then headed towards a café for dinner. Once we had eaten we took a slow stroll back to the dock and took the water taxi back out to our boat for the night.