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Galapagos Islands Travel Reviews

Review Details for: Galapagos Islands, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

Title: Galapagos Fish Frames

Posted By: Colt

Gender: Male

Age: 30 to 45 years

Trip date: Jan 2005

Overview :
Things to see and do : Go to Galapagos. Do not deny yourself this privilege in this lifetime!

13 islands. From space, they form an outline of a seahorse wrapped around a rock drifting 300 miles off the northwest coast of Ecuador.

Two Words:
DARWINS ARCH.

The name of the dive site is called the Theatre.

My guide from the Aggressor Fleet crew motor out to this remote rock on New Years Day where Charles Darwin began the theory and study of evolution.

I mean really, we are out in the middle of the Humboldt Current, this is where I witnessed two turtles mating in the sea. Hundreds of miles from any sustainable land mass. Had to check I was still on planet earth. I simply evolved as i understood immediately why my first Native rib tattoo from 1995 was of the 13 spiraled "Mishi".

We wake at 5am for the first of each daily 4 dive menu.
Full on Nitrox, 4mm wetsuits styling, and digital camera.

Walter Torres is a dive guru. Forget master.
He tells me honestly that the day before a tourist was lost at this
spot. Washed up on the jagged Arch itself after he lost his BC. They
found him several hours later. I think he evolved too.
Read this.

The drift below at 20-30m he explains is very strong. I must hang on to a rock or wedge myself into the stone once we are down. Then he tells me to stay by his side at all times within 5m.
Ok.
We Zodiac and dump off backwards in severe chop.
Intense. Powerful.
That initial swim down to 26m was one of the hardest things i ever faced at 5am.
Walter at one point reached up and grabbed me as i was nearly caught in the invisible line of an underwater rip and got me through it and sat me down at the "Theatre."

He pointed at me to stay put. Then he turns and swims out into the blue directly against this current out of my visible sight. WAIT! He said never leave his sight before.
I reached up to hold a rock, as i am pulling severely left, moray house. Blood trickles through my gloved hand as a very toothy grin smiles at me from the hole i just felt. This is classic I think.
Shark dive, within 1 minute i am bleeding.

You must know the perfection and coolness of diving in Galapagos is unlike most other dive spots. It's illegal to chum the waters, or take a shell for that matter, so the native fish, and big fish, never have associated humans with food sources.

I don't panic, far worse places to die than here I think.

Walter swims back through the current again, outta nowhere! To the EXACT same spot he left me.
Unbelievable navigation.

We make eye contact, he points to my camera, he points out to the blue, and if the man had a film storyboard to crack down, he would have.

Exactly 3 seconds later, two dolphins swim from left to right 8m out. Then a school of yellowtail flash by.
I look where my hand is, the moray had moved and was whipping so gracefully through my legs.
So humbled and insignificant.

A tortuga passes, and it was smiling, it may have been the one that just got lucky.
Then it happens, a SCHOOL of hammerheads come flying through against the grain. Effortless.

And they don't stop for 30 minutes. I am getting low on air. So Walter tells me to peel off as I won't have enough for the whole drift ascent around the arch bottom.

He points to the direction to to the safety stops, as I swim on my own drift current which takes me through and as near to 2 d
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