Santa Cruz

Admittedly not many people read this, so I didn't leave that many people hanging with promise of video footage. Here's the thing: turns out there's not enough bandwith on the island to upload videos of that size. Even when I broke up the video into three 5-minute clips (yeah it's a monster video), each clip suggested that it might take 8 hours to upload. My computer doesn't have the strength to survive that kind of exertion time.

Instead, I've decided on a new format. I'll still make these full videos, but I'll wait until I return to the States in December to upload them. In the meantime, to please the masses, I'll make short (30 second or so) trailers of the videos to at least get some of the footage out there. I want you to be able to see what I see because still shots don't do a dive justice.

The first trailer you'll see is from my just completed second video, on my trip to Santa Cruz this weekend. Here's the tale of my adventures to the island, with the video link at the end (with any luck!).

Feeling a little bit of island fever and feeling a little adventurous, four of us decided to hop on a boat early Saturday morning for a weekend on the most populated of the Islands, Santa Cruz (formerly Indefatigable--I love that name). Subsequently, we were all also feeling quite sick during the boat ride. Inter-island transport is by way of boats a shade under 30 feet long. The ride is 2 hours, and 25 people are on board. Having been the last to sign up, we were situated more towards the front of the boat. Turns out these seats are undesirable. We found out why. Ever been on a roller-coaster for two hours? Don't. It's a miserable experience. There was a four year old boy who was throwing up within 10 minutes, I kid you not. Somehow I managed to avoid vomiting but it was real close. Out of the four of us, one threw up and four were overjoyed to reach land. Side note for the Schmidt clan, on the way between Santa Cruz and San Cristobal, one passes by Santa Fe Island, formerly known as Barrington. Gives a sort of back home vibe to travel from Chatham Island past Barrington Island.

With class not convening until 2PM on Monday, we had 2 full days to explore the island before catching a ferry Monday morning. After finding a nice-looking hotel for a mere 15 bucks a night, we hopped in a taxi for the highlands. For 40 bucks, split four ways (actually five with the random swiss traveller who hopped in with us--he had grown tired of traveling alone as Jason Isbell might say), the cab driver took us up to the mouth of a trail to see two volcanic craters (Los Gemelos), where he waited for us to hike around. Here's some pics:

Here's one of the craters. Like so many other things here, it's unlike anything else I've ever seen

Spanish moss in a spanish speaking country you gotta love it

Artsiness like you read about

He then picked us up once we'd had our fill of fanciful forest scenery and proceeded to drive us to El Chato Giant Tortoise Ranch. A ranch for tortoises, can it get any better?

As an endangered species, I expected them to be in enclosures, kind of like the condor park back in Quito. I was wrong. And I was pumped to be wrong. We hadn't even arrived before our first sighting.

The Giant aspect is no misnomer. These things are huge. And so old. Turns out the taxi driver doubled as our guide through the ranch, as he had us swap our shoes for rubber boots and led us through a field which appeared to be boulder strewn. Every one of these was a tortoise. I thought I took a picture of the field but I guess not...

Either way here's a swag pic of me with one that our guide claims is 125

The oldest one in the park is apparently 150 or so, after the passing of one that our guide claimed to be 212 years old. I don't know if I buy this. It also could've been a translation issue. Hard to say.

This little guy is a mere 50 years old

Their lifestyle is exceptionally relaxed. They spend their entire day eating or napping, not unlike giant pandas. Once they have munched through all the grass they can reach with their surprisingly long necks, they struggle to their feet, laboriously move about two feet forward, park themselves right back down, and proceed to continue their grazing. 150 years of this must be quite boring.

Sometimes they go to mud patches to cool off

After we had wandered through the ranch, our faithful guide and driver brought us back to the hotel. We then headed back to the main boardwalk by the pier hoping to book a dive for the next day. We settled on Albatros Dive Tours (not a typo on my part, they only use one "s" in albatross), who were planning an excursion for Gordon Rocks the next morning. The cost was 150, with all gear included, which is actually a great price down here. It was also a great price considering what we saw. It was either 75 per Mola mola (my favorite fish) or $21.43 per Golden ray or maybe most impressively, a measly $3.75 per Hammerhead shark (estimated). This is considered one of the best dive sites in the Archipelago, along with the previously mentioned Kicker Rock and the northern sites of Darwin and Wolf Islands. I can't wait for people to see the full video (only about 4 minutes) of the weekend here, but here's some pictures of the dive and then the trailer in the meantime.

Angelfish came up and cleaned our boat hull while we were testing our buoyancy in a nearby cove. We also snorkeled here between dives.

Fresh pic of me

Two of the three rocks comprising Gordon Rocks. Oceanographically very similar to Kicker Rock, as it's characterized by immense underwater vertical walls, extending down to 32m, more or less

A family of 7 Golden Rays flew by

A gorgeous Eagle Ray in the deep

Our guide blowing bubble rings. The other boat worker called him king of the Land Sharks. I didn't really see that aspect of him in action, but he was a great guide

Yet another pufferfish that I haven't been allowed to inflate

Nice hiding spot bro

Here's my pic of the school of maybe 40 hammerheads that we saw. Again, I got too excited and was watching with my eyes and sort of blindly held my camera out to film. They were incredible to watch as a school and they were pretty big--maybe 8-10 feet each. 

Thankfully our guides also took some footage. They also took us to about 100 feet of depth, which is not generally encouraged. I don't even think we're certified for it but I was fully on board with the decision. Wherever the sharks are, I'm there.

The closest in the school honestly couldn't have been further than 10 or 12 feet from me 

They just kept going and going at a leisurely pace. They only swam fast, and in the other direction, thankfully, when someone blew bubbles a little too hard. Apparently they're pretty skittish and hate bubbles. Lucky for us I guess!

Still, this is what I was most excited about. Mola mola, or the ocean sunfish is my favorite fish and it was a dream come true to dive with it. It swam away pretty quickly but it was magnificent. We actually saw two and this was the bigger of the two.

You know you've had an incredible dive when the guides are excited upon resurfacing. They said we brought good luck and that we just had the dive of our lives. They might just be right, but over the course of two more months here, I'm not quite ready to give it that title just yet. One thing's for sure- this is nothing like a Cape Cod dive. It's still cool up there but you have to actively look for cool things like lobsters. Here, incredible things just show up in your periphery every couple of minutes like a David Attenborough-narrated nature program. Somehow, this is real life:

https://vimeo.com/141740622