Galapagos Archipielago

By Alberto Friscione

TheGalapagos Islands are located in the Pacific Ocean 972 km from the continental coast of Ecuador, they are formed by 13 islands, in which there are several volcanic buildings, the main ones are located on two of the islands, which are: Isabela and Fernandina.

We arrived at the island of Santa Cruz, on a flight from Guayaquil, as soon as we boarded our boat, fixed our diving equipment and got into the water to check that everything was fine and above all that our buoyancy was correct, since we used wetsuits much thicker than normal since the water temperature reaches 11 degrees Celsius.

In that first dive in very low water we could observe the sea lions that came to welcome us, once we tried the equipment we went to a place known as Cousin Rock where we observed some brightly colored fish and a huge school of barracudas, we wanted to see large animals, so we sailed all afternoon and night to reach Wolf Island, Considered one of the iconic sites of the archipelago there we could observe the sea dancers, the eagle rays, as well as the bat rays and a lot of life in general www.solobuceo.com

The next stop was Darwin’s Island, which along with Wolf are the most famous for their pelagic fauna, We dressed with joy and broke the water mirror, my first vision was of life, a lot of life, watermelon or gringo fish surrounded us and schools of silver fish passed by us. As soon as we reached the bottom we tried to hide between the stones to wait for the hammerhead sharks, which did not take long to appear, they passed very close to us and without any fear of us, as well as the Galapagos sharks and the whitetip sharks, it was incredible it seemed that we were in a great theater, the best was when swimming calmly a huge whale shark made its triumphant entrance, taking a leisurely turn and then disappearing into the infinite blue of the sea. This is Galapagos, this is life, this is why we had come. We were all happy with our full souls we sailed to another island to see the iguanas that get their food from the seabed, in which Darwin was inspired to write his book of The Origin of the Species.

They are huge animals that with their claws hold on to the stones and thus prevent the currents or the swells from moving them, to end our week on the ship life on board, we went to look for these strange and ancient fish that are the mola-mola.

These fish are very difficult to find because they live in the depths of the water, it was very cold and the visibility was not the best, but seeing these huge fish was worth it and believe me that it is a flow for me to be able to share all my underwater experiences in D’CASA MAGAZINE and in this way try to make us all aware of the life that is found in the depths of the ocean and fight for it. for its conservation.

Thanks to Pablo Simón for letting me use these magnificent photographs and also to Alexandro Zozaya for the generous invitation he made us to be in this very different world that is the Galapagos Archipelago, also known as the Enchanted Islands to Javier and Geronimo Arrigunaga as well as to Eduardo Guzmán for the time they dedicated to me.

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