Another two very nice days here in Cristobal. Victoria, another German boat with Kai, Heike and their sons Johannes and Niklas aboard, arrived on Friday. Nana and Heike had met upon checking out of Panama City/Balboa and were looking forward to getting the kids together once in the Galapagos. We had heard them on Panpacific SSB net earlier this week when they were about 500 nm away from Cristobal. Yesterday afternoon they came dinghying over to Namani and we chatted away a few hours in no time while the three boys were investigating Nicky’s Lego collection down below.

Today had us do a few repair jobs in the morning (so the epoxy no longer feels neglected in its storage space beneath the forepeak bunk. In the afternoon we planned to walk out to La Loberia, a nice beach on the SW end of Cristobal, with lots of sea lions, and nice snorkeling right among them (very cold water though, by our "Warmduscher" standards...). Luckily we met Matthieu, Lea and their parents on shore, a French family whom we had briefly met in Shelter Bay before our Canal Transit. With ages 8 (Nicky), 6 1/2 (Matthieu) and 5 (Lea) and a not a common language between them, it was beautiful to see how much fun they had playing together (greatly helped by Matthieu's contageous enthusiasm). We ended up doing the 40 min walk together and enjoyed our time on the beach.

Nicky and Mami will leave for St. Cruz early tomorrow (Monday) morning to join a 4-day tour of the central islands. Papi will watch Namani and then join them on Thursday. Stay tuned...