SEALS AND SEA LIONS

Both seals and sea lions, together with the walrus, are pinnipeds, which means "fin footed" in Latin. 

But seals' furry, generally stubby front feet - thinly webbed flippers, actually, with a claw on each small toe - seem petite in comparison to the mostly skin-covered, elongated fore flippers that sea lions possess.

Secondly, sea lions have small flaps for outer ears. The "earless" or "true" seals lack external ears altogether. You have to get very close to see the tiny holes on the sides of a seal's sleek head.

Third, sea lions are noisy. Seals are quieter, vocalizing via soft grunts.

Fourth, while both species spend time both in and out of the water, seals are better adapted to live in the water than on land. Though their bodies can appear chubby, seals are generally smaller and more aquadynamic than sea lions. At the same time, their hind flippers angle backward and don't rotate. This makes them fast in the water but basic belly crawlers on terra firma.

http://www.darwinadventure.com/pictures/sea-lion.htm

Sea lions, on the other hand, are able to "walk" on land by rotating their hind flippers forward and underneath their big bodies. This is why they are more likely to be employed in aquaria and marine shows.

http://www.theanimalfiles.com/mammals/seals_sea_lions/galapagos_fur_seal.html

Finally, seals are less social than their sea-lion cousins. They spend more time in the water than sea lions do and often lead solitary lives in the wild, coming ashore together only once a year to meet and mate.

Sea lions congregate in gregarious groups called herds or rafts that can reach upwards of 1,500 individuals. It's common for scores of them to haul out together and loll about in the sand, comprising an amorphous pile in the noonday sun.

PARCELS

Parcels are turning out to be the bane of our lives. Not only the receiving of, as you have been made aware of in the blog, but now in the sending. There is a small boy having a birthday at the end of the month, and I have been sitting in 30 plus degree heat knitting!!! Yes, and now the item is finished and needs to be posted. So we trotted along to the post office yesterday to find out 2 things. The parcel has to be open for inspection, so the fancy paper I had uncrumpled and recycled will have to go, and we need a black and white copy of our passport. Friday pm, and the agent has our passports to get the exit stamps. Office not open on Saturdays, so departure will now be after an 0800 trip to the post office, which in the nature of post offices is as far from the boat as you can get witout leaving town. Not a problem according to the nice post lady as parcels don't leave till Wednesdays anyway as they go on the weekly boat. ..
That might give Alex time to grow a bit...

http://www.galapagosislands.com/visitor-sites/floreana-pob.html

That is if the agent turns up with the diesel ( he took the jerrycans yesterday) and the documents we need to go.

Next stop about 43000 miles at Hiva Oa.

View Larger Map 

FINGERS CROSSED!!!

Today (06/06/13) may be a very good day or a very bad day, depending on what happens next. Intrigued?

Well, it's like this.

After a lot of bullying of our agent, and a lot of help from a lovely young lady who speaks wonderful English we met accidentally, we received our big yellow box from DHL that Rachel sent. It had been held up in customs and needed some more information sent to Ecuador, including an emailed set of documents from Rachel. That was step one, and I was delighted to track it leaving customs, but despondent to see it flag up that it had been refused by the agent! So it was another job for Carla and her English; she knows the agent and he would not want to lose face with her. So $186 more in customs taxes, and it arrived on Saturday evening. I was almost in tears of joy. A big surprise was in it too - more in a minute.

So with that accomplished, what else is there?

6 very heavy batteries for the boat. We have just looked out and the freighter is here as expected and somewhere in the hold there are our batteries. That has been a saga as well, as we spent 2 weeks trying on our own to source them (they are not common) and we were told eventually a chap would get them in for us but it would take 3 weeks to get them. We mentioned this to Carla and she picked up a phone. This was Thursday morning and the boat for here loads once a week on a Friday. After an hour she told us she had found the batteries in Quito, her brother would get them to the boat in Guaquil and we could have them when the boat got in on Tuesday, or Wednesday depending on where they were in the unloading. And the boat has just arrived!!

All we have fingers crossed now for is that they really are the right ones and will work. We are down to a very dodgy battery for overnight fans, and it is about to go to heaven with the other ones.

And then there is more! The lovely Carla has arranged 2 trusty air divers to clean our hull as it has become a marine forest in the couple of weeks we have been here.

EVEN MORE!!
In the big yellow box there was a card for Grandpa Dave - his birthday was the next day, how good was that! And Alex had written his own name and drawn som artwork as well. I cannot thank Rachel enough for the foresight to include it, it made Dave's day.

Then there will be the hunt the agent chase for our clearance papers and we can move on........

MAYBE TODAY!!!
07/03/13) Having stared at the lovely green freighter in the harbour entrance disgorging goodies for the town Carla came by and said that it was not our boat, which was turning up in the late afternoon and would be blue. So the battery saga continues. I really do hope today is battery day, as the ones we are using really are not well at all.

HOWEVER
Yesterday turned out to be a good day after all. We were looking our for the taxi driver who gets the water for us when Carla turned up again, this time in an open boat with 2 young men to introduce us to our dive team who were going to clean the bottom of the boat. And they were the business, compressor and bottle gas, what more could you ask for. And a bonus - English! So while they returned Carla to shore the water arrived, all 14 jerrycans of it to be emptied and cans returned. Just as well the divers came back as we managed to lose 2 overboard in the swell. Not daunted, one of the trusty duo dived in and retrieved them and put them in the dive boat to give back to us. So while Dave started the emptying of water bottles into the tank at 20 litres a go, I collected brushes and scrapers and other useful things and got the team underway.

Then it rained - and boy, did it rain! 2 buckets full collected so washing of undies and non-laundry items was accomplished with no depletion of the tanks. My halo is well polished!

So we now have a very clean hull and had better get going soon before it all comes back again. I was delighted to see a couple of sea lions swimming around near our divers and showing them how swimming was REALLY done - wonderful, but they had no way of holding a scraper so it was all show and no substance!

FINALLY
The great scrabble fest is underway in the afternoon with the usual ups and downs. Have to tell -"squeeze" down on a triple word score for 90! 

BOOBIES!!

Boobies!

BOOBIES

The intrepid pair are sitting on the back end of the boat in the shade when all of a sudden there is a loud SPLOOSHSPLAT. Looking behind them they see ripples spreading out from a central focus and what seems like ages later there is a plop as up pops a bird. These are the amazing boobies. They fly about high overhead and then make a kamikaze dive into the water – we never see if they get anything – and then up they come, shake themselves a bit, and the flap flap with the wings and flap flap with their big blue feet and they are airborne for another go. And they really do have bright blue beaks and bright blue feet. What we don’t understand is how they don’t knock themselves out when they hit the water at the speed they do.

NOT GOOD NEWS

And now the batteries. The electrics on the boat are very much Dave’s baby as he has put a lot of effort into making up a good system. I had heard him talk about the batteries as being super dooper ones and all seemed OK. He looks at them regularly and tops them up and they seem to provide power when we need it so they tend to be taken for granted. So the day came to give them a once over and shock horror, they are not very well at all. Something had seemed to be not quite right for some time though, as we had been charging the batteries with the engine for longer and longer times each day, but it creeps up on you. After getting them out of their cubby holes, which is not easy, the truth dawned – we need new ones. Here, in Galapagos, the back of nowhere!  Dave has salvaged a couple and we can make do overnight, but no way can we set off for over a month at sea with things as they are.

So we started at one end of the town, going from one shop to the next one suggested, until we came to a shop full of cleaning products, but with a sign outside that said ‘battery agent’. It did not look promising at all, but in we went, and found a lass who could speak a bit of English. Over the next few days we were in touch with her boss who was in Ecuador at the time on a re-supply mission, and with a great deal of effort on his part it appears he has been able to find what we need at last. It did look hopeless at first and Dave was getting most despondent, thinking we might have to risk using truck batteries with much less capacity than we need just to get us to Tahiti, with the risk that they would not last the distance given the demands that would be put on them. So now it is off to the cash machines to start the money drain to pay for them, and we wait for the next supply ship and their arrival in a week's time.

It would appear we should never stop anywhere – whenever we stop we seem to find a problem!

STOP PRESS

Dave has refused to consider doing anything other than the British thing of shout louder in another language. He has just come back proud of his purchase of a can of fly spray – except it is lavender air freshener.

‘I went, “shhh shhh“ and made aerosol can signs,’ he said. ‘What more can you want?’

'HOLA! HOLA! HOLA!'

Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, San Cristobel, Galapagos 

'HOLA! HOLA! HOLA!'
Bangbangbangbang on the hull -bangbangbangbang

It is 6:30 in the morning and two sleepy heads poke out of the companionway.
'Hola, mira!'  meaning !look!

We look and see the back end of a very large fuel carrier bearing down on us at what appears to be a very great rate of knots. All is clear - we have to shift, and NOW!

Scurry for some clothes, fall out on to the deck and wrap up the cover, get the anchor ready for lifting, untie the wheel, turn on the engine, while this thing gets ever closer. It is indeed vast.

Then a very nice Navy man appears in a boat and asks in English if we are going to move! I say yes, just a few minutes and he very politely agrees that is a good idea. 

So off we go trundling around the bay for another spot to sit on as the fuel carrier edges backwards towards the jetty and drops its anchor from the bow before sending stern ropes ashore to be tied off. 

We were right in the middle of the path. 

We then watch as one of the water taxis drags a big string of yellow sausages around it and we suddenly twig what it was that we had seen on the jetty the night before - a barrier in case of fuel spills.

We are OK in our present spot with one exception - we have lost our wifi link. This was a bit sporadic but we managed to get hooked up to a slow service each day, but now there is nothing and we will have to run ashore again looking for a spot on the sea front. Not as easy as you would think, as we found when I was trying to post the blog that all is not well there either. And then I finally fluked being able to post it very early last Sunday morning from the boat. So it is back to our Kate and the radio email till I can get myself sorted. Even ashore last week it took 3 goes before I could even log onto my own blog - heaven knows what goes on in the ether!.

But all is not tooooooo bad - apart from the parcel that is still stuck in Ecuador and dead domestic batteries. More of that later.

EQUATOR           

Just to prove we have crossed the equator, here is the proof – GPS reading of 00deg00.00 or almost as

there was a shutter delay, and the man doing the honours with the bottle of wine. And it is hot!!

Soooooo…..Where are we now?

Brrrkkkkk!barrrrrkkkk!Grokkkk!ArrrrrkkkArrrkkkArkkkkk!

Barkarkarkark bark bark aaaaaarrrkkkkkk!

And very loud it is too – the sounds of sea lions

We are anchored off Puerto Baquerizo Moreno (Shipwreck Bay) San Cristobel, Galapagos. And lovely it is too, if a little on the warm side for me as temperatures wander between 30 and 38 degrees C  each day. I have sent Dave ashore for an adventure of his own to get a bit of peace and quiet to do a little writing. He is not affected by the heat at all – maybe he is a cousin to the iguanas sunbaking on the rocks. I am more like the sea lions, a dip in the water before drying off before a dip in the water etc.

We are delighted to be here. It is a small community, but exceptionally friendly and incredibly safe – we have no need to lock anything or fear for our possessions as we did in Panama, and it is an open and very clean town. In fact it must be the neatest and cleanest place we have ever been in. It is also the only place we have been where the sea lions share the park benches with you and accompany you down the street. In fact there are sea lions everywhere – the childrens play area, the beaches and rocks, steps leading to the water taxis, and any dinghy afloat or low slung boat of any kind. Our friends on Fifi, a catamaran, were a prize place for a sea lion as the steps up the back of the pods were an easy jump.

There are brown pelicans  everywhere, and various as yet unidentified sea birds around, manta rays in the water and big spotted fish and the occasional turtle. We are constantly visited by sea lions swimming around us, probably looking for a sleeping place, but we have too many bits of hardware for them to get a purchase. But they delight with their grace and agility, so different to the laborious struggle up the beach and onto the rocks.

THE OUTING

We have had a superb day out as a reward for a not so superb day of engine maintenance and diesel antics. The engine work is always a nightmare – it has to be done I know – as it always involves mess, spills, spurts and leaks, despite Dave’s best efforts. So after a sweaty day sorting it all out so it is ready for the next leg which is the longest of the lot, we had a treat. Our agent, Bolivar, arranged for his friend Wilmer to take us around the island. We assumed Wilmer would have had a bit of English – wrong, but I was chuffed to bits as he conversed with me in the broken Spanish I have supplemented by lots of arm waving. He took us everywhere and walked with us too. We went up the side of the volcano, (which nearly did me in!) and Dave took off around it as well. We cannot get the pikkies of the camera he used as the battery charges won’t work and the battery is dead – grrrrrr. We then went to the tortoise conservation place.

The last giant tortoise is now dead, and with his demise the species became extinct after being hunted and eaten out of survival. There is a strong breeding programme for the other tortoises , and the place was fascinating.

Tortoises take so long to reproduce. 14 eggs a year, 25 years to sexual maturity, then well over 100 years of life. There was one we met yesterday who was 167 years of documented age and there was a bit before that – he was a family pet handed down the generations. The pikkies from the hatchery are not very good, but they stay small for ages and it is 5 years before they can be put out into the wild.

After the tortoises we drove to the other end of the island, back near where we are and along a bit, to the place where the marine iguanas are. 

They are so primeval in their looks, but not fussed by our photo shoot. Dave reckons one of them returned his good bye wave with a paw shake.

Along from the iguanas is the loberia, or seal lion nursery (Spanish for sea lion is lobo) and we watched the babies cavort and play rough and tumble in the shallows. The mums were a bit further back in the deeper water keeping a watching brief – bit like mother and toddler groups for us I guess. The photos did not show them up I am afraid. People were swimming along in the same place, and a bit further out there was a good surf for the board riders.  And it was baking hot  with no shade and the sun reflected mercilessly from the sand and the rocks.

Then home again after picking up the laundry (what an excellent way to do the washing – give it in and receive it all back clean and neatly folded!) That was icing on the cake!

Shipwreck Bay

At 5pm yesterday we dropped the anchor in Shipwreck Bay, San Cristobel. We had had to motor the last couple of days, and in the early hours of the morning yesterday the rain came - and did it come!! Visibility dropped to just above a mile, but thanks to the GPS and radar and our trusty chart we made it in OK. 

View Larger Map 

We have parked ourselves next to Fifi, and Erica and Kevin came over for a very wet visit and a cup of tea. The first thing you notice is the number of sea lions, they are everywhere including any dinghy that is in the water and on the back steps of Fifi. Fifi is a catamaran and the back steps up the pods make a really nice sea lion perch and he was not to be deterred when Kevin lowered his dinghy. During the visit we heard a grunt, groan, kerplosh as another one made it into Fifi's dinghy. 

Shipwreck Bay

Our agent braved the rain to come out to us just after the anchor was down, and after a cup of coffee departed with all our papers to fix us up. We are programmed to have a visit at 10am this morning from the Port Captain, Immigration, Customs, the Bug Catcher and the National Park man as well as our agent. Where they are all going to go I have no idea, but we have had the heads up that they will do anything for a can of Coca Cola, so there is a raft in the fridge. It is not so long ago that you could not visit at all, so these formalities are a small price (the real price is not so small!). 

So now the sun is trying to get through the clouds and maybe the rain has stopped we will get tidied up and see what we can see.