Diving With Giants - The Galapagos Islands

Everyone woke up excited with the prospect of what we would see. We didn't have a dive briefing since all 4 dives would be basically the same site as yesterday. In the water we saw a turtle gently swimming along, and even a dolphin swimming right below us. All week we saw a number of pairs of bigeye trevally, always swimming in pairs. We nick-named them "me and my shadow".

Between dives we had some delicious chocolate-caramel pastries (the morning snacks were great!). After an hour we went back in and saw more hammerhead sharks as well as a tropical flounder trying to blend in. As with many of the dives here, we saw 3 to 5 foot moray eels all over the place, some just swimming along the rocks.

On the third dive the current had shifted to the opposite direction. After about 10 minutes a bunch of the divers decided to swim into the current. We decided to conserve our air, so we just stayed put. After another 15 minutes we let go and started to drift with the current. Santiago was drifting with us and we went out over a sandy area between the arch and the island. We saw a couple of turtles, some hammerheads and a bunch of other fish. Even though we had drifted quite a ways, the panga was right there when we surfaced.

Since we had enjoyed drifting so much, we decided to do it again on the last dive. We let go after only 10 minutes and drifted back out over the sandy area. As we were sailing along we noticed some big fish to our right. As we looked closer we realized that it was a huge school of hammerheads! Rick swam over close to them and we watched for quite a while as we zoomed past the huge school. Rick got a bunch of pictures as Randy watched him swimming with the sharks.

As the sun was beginning to set the boat slowly passed Darwin Arch for the last time. Then we accelerated to cruising speed and headed to Wolf Island for the next day's diving.