Sea Lions

One of my favourite things about the Galapagos Islands are the sea lions (or lobos marinos - sea wolves - in Spanish).  They are certainly ubiquitous on San Cristobal Island... and not only on the beaches and natural spaces.  It's not uncommon to look up from reading your book or having a nap on a bench on the boardwalk to see you're actually sharing your bench with a sea lion pup...

... or to gaze out into the turquoise waters from the jetty to see a sea lion floating along, basking in the sun...

... or vying for position on the jetty steps...

... and you know you're in a strange place when you go for a walk downtown, only to find yourself sharing the street with a sea lion as she saunters down the main drag!

The best place to interact with the sea lions however, is, wherelse, but "Sea Lion Island" (Isla Lobos), just off the west coast of the main island of San Cristobal.  Here you can snorkel with the sea lions and see them dipping and diving and summer-saulting... and have so much fun playing with them and soaking up their bubble-kisses!

Yesterday I spent an hour playing 'fetch' with a pair of lobos... they were playing just the two of them and I was hanging back smiling and watching, taking pictures... and then... you'll never believe it... they invited me to join in on their game!!!  No kidding!  They had been rolling around together passing a stolen dried sea cucumber between them, and kept getting closer to me, and although I was trying to keep my distance, they got so close as to touch me!  Then the one that I had been playing summersaulting with and had been giving me bubble kisses earlier, set the sea cucumber down on the sand and looked up forlornly as if he were in desperate need of a playmate... then motioned for me to pick it up... so I did!  I mimicked their play, then tossed it back to them... and this back-and-forth exchange went on and on!  What fun with these intelligent beings!

I've seen them taunting sting rays and marine iguanas in the past as well... It's obvious that the interaction was not to harm them, but just in play!

Last month at Isla Lobos we experienced an interesting stage during the sea lion lifecycle... for several weeks after the pups had been born the big daddy macho kept them all corralled in the area I call the 'nursery'.  Then one day, they were allowed out to play... and they were the at the cutest stage ever!

Timmy Ho's

It's 9 am at Toronto Pearson Airport.  I have an extra-long transit time in the Toronto airport since arriving on my flight from Ecuador while waiting to catch the bus which will deliver me home...
I arrived, zipped through customs and found an out-of-the way comfy chair to set myself up an enclave for a nap, a read, or to enjoy the (finally!) free wi-fi at the airport.

It is also strategically located with a view of the Tim Horton's lineup.

I took up my post at 7am.  I'm not in a rush... I have hours to fill until 2pm... so I decided I would wait to make my approach on Timmy's until there was no lineup.  It's been 2 hours, and it's not looking promising!  There has been a constant line of at least 10 people, at times 2- and 3-deep!  All I wanted was a Timmies, now back on my home soil... or perhaps it's the cloves that have me craving... ???  Anyway, it's an eye opener at the lucrative coffee business of Timmies!

Five Years!?

Where has the time GONE?

People in Indonesia are always commenting on my bahasa abilities, and asking the next logical question, which is "How long have you been in Indonesia"?  I just realized the other day that I was answering FIVE YEARS!

And now here I am headed back again for another indefinite length of time... The place must be addictive... or it's all the cloves... wasn't there a study done a while back that showed cloves to be addictive?  And I seem to remember Tim Horton's catching some flack because they were putting cloves in the coffee to keep people coming back for more of the liquid gold?!  hmmm... there might be something to this theory!?

Hammer-time!

If swimming with dolphins is good for the soul, diving with hammerheads is certainly good for an adrenaline rush!

We're rarely disappointed when we dive at Leon Dormido (Kicker Rock)... Although they're not always there in massive schools like you would find up at Darwin and Wolf, the hammerheads are always around.  They seem more shy, and we don’t always see them.... But we have been seeing them almost daily for the past several months!  And there were out in force today - a school of at least 20 of them!  Their thick, muscular bodies never cease to impress me.  And their ridiculously-shaped heads always remind me that it’s better to design for function than beauty.  

They weren’t the only impressive things on this set of dives; In the tranquil channel between the two segments of the Sleeping Lion, we saw at least 50 Galapagos sharks, and the usual array of fusiliers, blue-eyed angel fish, wrasses, puffers and nudibranchs.  On the western slope is where we found all the action, including a slight current.  This is where we spotted the hammerheads on 4 different passes as well as a graceful school of 8 eagle rays, and a congregation of huge green sea turtles who seemed to be doing a courtship dance.  Hanging out at 15m on the western slope we also observed a massive school of hundreds of chevron barracuda and several yellowfin tuna jetting by.

The water was a chilly 19oC, but we didn’t even realize we were numb because it was such an exciting dive!

The visibility left a bit to be desired, but even so I managed to get a few nice shots, and one video... 

Best Fishes,

Ange


p.s. you can be part of the action!   www.tranquilodivers.com

Dolphin Love

I don't think that there is anything better for the soul than swimming with dolphins in the wild!

We had a magical day sometime last week... a school of hundreds of bottlenosed dolphins were teasing me throughout our snorkel at Kicker Rock... I was hearing their clicks and squeaks... but couldn't see them, and everyone thought I was nuts-o because they couldn't see them either... but when we got into the boat, there they appeared right at our side... so I slipped back in, and it seemed they were happy to have another compatriot, as they continued to play as they had been, and we got some up-close-and-personal dolphin love!

p.s. you can be part of the action!   www.tranquilodivers.com

Montserrat - The Emerald Isle

I have nothing but fond memories of living on Montserrat... and would love to go back for a visit again some day.

It was back in 1987, and what posessed my fabulous, adventurous parents to relocate us for 6 months to a small caribbean island, i'm still not quite sure... but i am so glad they did!  No doubt memories of a 9 year old are distorted by the fact that one can't yet entirely distinguish fantasy from reality, but...  I remember the places we lived as tropical palaces, the local people as happy easy-going purple-black friends, the fruit new and exotic, the roti spicy and intriguing to my budding taste buds, and the Island as massive and varied.  I just spent some time on Google Earth trying to figure out the lay of the whopping 16km island once more, with a little difficulty, since, in addition to a volcanic facelift, it looks like there has been A LOT of development since '87!


I remember also a trip up to 'the middle of nowhere' in the mountains to eat some famous food... it was Miss Ann Morgan's goatwater stew.  To be honest, I don't remember whether I liked it or not, and I can't imagine how the name stuck, but when I did a little online search, I found out that she is still serving up the national dish in the same spot!

Most people had never even heard of Montserrat before the Soufriere volcano erupted consistently from 1995 through 1997, destroying half of the island, including the capital of Plymoth, the airport, and certainly, the tourist industry along with it!  You can see the extent of the impact in the map and the satellite image below.  I remember taking a family trip to hike up into the Soufriere hills to visit the volcano... twice actually (because we took a wrong turn and didn't make it to the volcano the first time around!?).  It was my first exposure to the yellow-sulphurous rocks and stinky fumaroles of a 'dormant' volcano - well, obviously it was brewing something up, since it was less than ten years after that things really heated up!

I certainly hope that the Monsterratians are still limin' on their beautiful beaches!  ... I hope they still have some of their beautiful beaches, and that they don't all look like the lava fields above!?  Limin' is local lingo meaning chillin' or 'hangin' out, and is apparently a popular term throughout the West Indes.

As a British dependent territory the island flies the United Kingdom (UK) flag. The coat of arms dates from 1909, and shows a woman dressed in green, holding a cross and harp. The cross is symbolic of Christianity, while the harp and woman recall Irish immigrants that settled on the island in 1632.  Erin is the symbol of freedom for Ireland.  (worldatlas.com)

Even the fish are on beetelnut???

Or so it would seem looking at the red-stained teeth of these bumphead parrotfish...

Giant Bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum)

Algae perhaps?

I couldn't help but think of the many many villagers in Raja Ampat that had the typical red-stained teeth from chewing beetel, such as in the picture below...

I've written more about Beetelnut in a previous post, which you can read here.