Baltra Island, Board Boat, Mosquera Islet, Friday 4 November

 Most of my footage on the first couple of days is still being uploaded from the GoPro. But I want these posts to be in order so I will do the narrative. I will tell you when I have actual photos for this post. 

This page is for my volcano geek friends: Bree, Bryan, Jamie

The Galapagos trip ended up being a saga rather than a post.  For links to the whole trip please go to the first Galapagos post.

I have related to you how we were greeted at the airport and given our first safety lessons. A short bus ride, then onto the Tip Top V. We were assigned our rooms, and given a few minutes to assess our clothing change to our first hike on Baltra. White sand and black lava.

Photo by Lulu

A short, lovely hike. The sand is actually white coral. I so wanted to pick up a piece to bring home, but this is forbidden.

We saw some bones left undisturbed. 

Photo by Lulu

And our first Sea Lions. Baby sea lions are cuteness.  They are curious and active.  Think of kittens.  Very large kittens.

 

Photo by Lulu

The tide went further out than expected and all of the easy landing places disappeared. Here is where our boat crew really showed their stuff. For more than a half hour, our two pangas, and one from the Tip Top II went back and forth discussing the various options. The three guides also traipsed back and forth to find the safest landing. They opted for a spit of lava. At this point all of us tour folk were total rubes and not yet oriented towards group. But we made it. The young bucks lined up to hand us less adept to the guides and crew that “helped” us on to the bouncing pangas. The panga driver would keep it pinned to the rocks with the outboard motor. Someone had the brilliant idea of putting sand on the “path” so my towel was sacrificed to the bucket brigade. We sustained only two minor falls.

Then we had a mid water transfer to the other panga. This resembled tossing of unwilling baggage from one bouncing inflatable boat to another. Not a pretty sight, but better than swimming to the catamaran. The smaller panga went for the rest of our group, then helped with loading the group from the other ship.

Like I said elsewhere, this gave me the deepest respect for our crew and guides. My background in emergency service and in setting up events with inexperienced volunteers gave me a perspective on all of this that many of the others didn’t have. They have my deepest respect.

At this point we were all new at the getting on and off thing. And mostly there was lava for us to have to clamber across. Any doubts about the skill of the boatmen, or our guides was gone. These guys were good. Very, very good. The more able body in our group streached out to hand the more wobblie of us to the boat. The smaller boat took us out to the larger of the two where we did a transfer. Easier said than done. There was another group on the beach from a boat that we were to be traveling with, Tip Top II, and our boat guys helped them to get their passengers transferred as well.

When back on the boat we got the first of our daily briefings. Followed by a safety orientation, complete with how to wear our personal life vest...a bit more complicated than the life vest talk on an airplane. Oh yeah, we got a chance to hear a sound that was going to become so familiar to us. The anchor being raised. This involves a chain, a very big chain, being winched up. Just outside of our neighbor’s bedroom.

Lava and volcanos

Different island, but typical shore

I wanna say something here about volcanos and lava.  These islands are all lava, with a bit of other stuff starting to accumulate.  The beaches are white from accumulated coral.  Or red from iron in the rock.

There are two kinds of lava. Think of a tray of brownies.  Straight out of the oven.

A'a is the chunky sharp stuff.  It looks like what happens when you drop the whole tray.

Pahoehoe is the stuff that looks like the brownies when you take them out, not quite baked, and tilt the tray on the side.

Then there are the strata of ash and rock that get covered by lava.  And when that stuff erodes it is amazingly beautiful.  But more on strata later

We only saw dirt when we were on Santa Cruz. This is the oldest and tallest of the islands.  As we went up in altitude we saw more soil, and more plants to create and to hold the soil in place.

But my biggest geek in this part of stuff is the volcano.  I saw a volcano venting from a vent. 

My fire weary eyes saw that and thought it was a forest fire. Lulu put me straight on that.

Last summer I spent a lot of time in the volcanos of the Cascade mountains. One of the first things I did in California was to drive by Shasta. And the fact that today I saw that Hawaii is being active is really tough on me. I am so tempted to find a plane heading that way.