As mentioned previously, we were limited to only two available tours during our stay at Isla San Cristobal. The second tour we went on was a diving/snorkeling trip out to Leon Dormido, locally known as Kicker Rock. We sailed past this prominent rock with it's split face when we first arrived in the islands. Due to the currents in the area that bring fresh plankton and fish, the location is a popular place for the Galapagos shark to hang around. We went out on a local tour boat that had 12 people on board for snorkeling and six divers.
The boat took us to the face of the rock and the divers splashed in and descended to 60 feet. The wall was very colourful with lots of blue, red and green sponges along the face, some soft fan coral and lots of reef fish. As we turned into the cut and descended a few more feet we could see several of the sharks swimming around us. They weren't too large at around one metre in length, although Linda saw one that was over two metres long - fortunately at a safe distance. We sat on the bottom for a few minutes 
and got to see a couple of hammerhead sharks swim by plus a turtle and several sea lions, as well as all the usual large amounts of colourful fish. After 40 minutes in 70F water we felt as if we were frozen to death. It took 45 minutes on surface before the uncontrollable shaking from cold (not from the sharks!) finally stopped. But after our surface interval we were ready to go again for another dive to see it all again.
Wow! We are so jealous! Haven't read your news for a while, though was thinking of you with the tsunami. Mike and I head off to Belize tomorrow for 2 weeks. We plan on diving there. It is our silver wedding anniversary and we did talk about going to the Galapagos but decided it would be too expensive - wouldn't that have been wild if we were there at the same time! Looking forward to catching up with you if you are up north this summer. Enjoy.
Posted by: Caroline and Mike | March 22, 2011 at 05:51 PM