Day 1 Galapagos to Marquesas Islands 4/30/13

We left Santa Cruz, Galapagos Island at 12pm today. We are happy to find 10 knots of wind and making a average speed of 5 knots. We have 3,011 nautical miles to go and a whole lot of time to fish, read, and think. But as a whole my experience in the Galapagos was good. I saw lots of sea turtles, sharks, hammerhead sharks, sea lions, iguanas, penguins, really big tortoises, blue footed boobies, and a million other kinds of birds. The climate was warm about 80 degrees everyday and in the afternoon when all the shops closed from 12 to 3pm for nap time, it got up to 90. At night the cool breeze from the Southern Pacific Ocean was like air conditioning and cooled us all down to about 75 degrees, “good beer drinking weather”. The skies were cloudy most of the time but bright and the sun would shine through to turn the harbor water ocean green and light blue. The Islands were covered with short shrubs and big bushes that grew tall with vines that choked out anything around them. The growth on the island was so thick that no one could really walk anywhere with out chopping your way through. There where some cactuses covered in bright yellow and blue flowers that showed how hot and dry it gets here. The really nice thing about the Galapagos is that other then the sharks there is not a lot of thing that can kill you. But I really thought that the area would be really untouched from man but a lot of the islands shows signs of man abusing it. I only hope that the Ecuador Government does not continue to exploit the Galapagos more then they already have. I feel that they should only issue a few permits each year for people to visit and that’s it, but time will tell.

Take Easy!

Jacques