Sea-kayaking in the Galapagos Sarah A Miller Sea-kayaking from Puerto Baquerizo to Playa El Manglecito (Photo: Robyn Fry).
Sea lions playing at Muelle Tijeretas.
My sister Ruth had been keen to go to the Galapagos and do some sea-kayaking for a few years and when I retired, I agreed to go too. In April 2019, Robyn and I (from Lake Macquarie, NSW), met up with Ruth and Don (from Point Elliot, SA) in Lima, Peru. After a few days we flew on to Quito in Ecuador, where we met our ROW Adventures local tour guide, Ignatio (who preferred to be called Nacho from his time in Australia), and two other group members, a lovely couple, Diane and David from New York, USA. The next morning, we flew to Santa Cruz, with quarantine checks at the airports in both Quito and Isla Baltra. We spent a few days on Santa Cruz visiting a farm with Giant Tortoises, a farm that grows sugar and coffee and value adding to make fudge and ‘Galapagos Moonshine’, as well as visiting the Charles Darwin Research Station. These visits were interspersed with a half day paddle on ‘sit-on-kayaks’ looking at wildlife in the water and on the cliffs of the bay, as well as swims at the beach. Ruth was thrilled to see a blue-footed-booby so early in our trip. We stayed at a local hotel in Puerto Ayora, dining on local fish and produce. Our Galapian guides were tertiary trained, a requirement for
leading tours into the National Parks, and had a wealth of experience and willingness to answer all manner of questions.
Early one morning we took a high-speed inter -island boat to Puerto Baquerizo on Isla San Cristobal, where we stayed in a local hotel and picked up our snorkelling gear. As our trip had limited luggage allowances, I had packed only my prescription diving mask and underwater phone casing for snorkelling. We walked 2.5 kilometres around to a bay called Muelle Tijeretas, where we saw a range of beautiful sponges, schools of fish, and gracious turtles, and were entertained by sealions playing, with one pair tugging on the same stick. The next morning, we dropped our luggage off for the support boat and collected our sea -kayaks; plastic doubles. After adjusting the SisterShip 4
