Nana
25-Mar-2012, Anchored off Cristobal, Galapagos

We are now all reunited on Namani. We took a day trip around a few more Cristobal sights with the French family aboard the catamaran „Eol“ - Matthieu and Lea are a little younger than Nicky but are very outgoing and friendly, so Nicky has a great time with them. Nana keeps butchering the French language so the poor parents, Clementine and Greg, are very patient and kindly rescue us (and maybe their own sanity) by switching into English for our sakes. Pardon! (Nana plans to study hard on the 3-4 weeks it takes to reach the Marquesas). Several boats have already left for the Marquesas, and we are building our own little radio net to allow everyone to report their positions. It provides a safety net and a little social contact as well. So far, it has been slow going for them, so we'll see what we encounter when we depart sometime around March 30th. Until then, we have a beach playdate with more kids, several repair jobs, and a bit more provisioning to do.

09 - Pacific Crossing

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Nana
24-Mar-2012, Anchored off Cristobal, Galapagos

After one week of settling in and seeing a bit of San Cristobal, we headed off to see more of the Galapagos Islands. Private boats can't move freely through the archipelago so the best way (actually the only way) to see the top wildlife sights is to join a tour. Nana and Nicky found a great last minute deal on a four day tour aboard the „Darwin“ that visited the central islands (Santa Cruz, Santiago, Bartolome, and Seymour Islands). What a fantastic experience! We saw every species one can hope to see on the islands we visited, even the more elusive ones, like Galapagos hawks, fur seals, and penguins (which are numerous over in the colder water of the westernmost islands, but harder to find in the slightly warmer central islands), in addition to the „usual“ - prehistoric-looking marine iguanas, blue-footed boobies, cavorting sea lions, colorful red Sally Lightfoot crabs, and of course the finches. The trip kept us busy with two or three hikes and two snorkel trips each day. Nicky made a huge leap forward, covering long distances and learning to clear his snorkel and mask alone while treading water. The reward was spotting sharks (white tipped, black tipped, and Galapagos sharks, up to 5-6 feet in length) and sea turtles, in addition to lots of colorful fish. We were lucky to have a nice, international group of people on board, and several of them played round after round of cards with Nicky in the evenings. On our last day, we saw blue footed boobies perform their mating dance and male frigate birds puffing out their red chests to attract females – all just a step away from us! Markus was back in Cristobal keeping an eye on Namani during that time, but then he took a ferry to meet us in Santa Cruz and did a long day trip from there to Isla Isabela with Nicky. (Meanwhile, Nana headed back to Namani; it would be a little risky to leave the boat completely unattended.) Isabela is in some ways the most scenic island, and they saw lots of tortoises, penguins, and sharks there. The Galapagos Islands certainly live up to their reputation as a fantastic place for wildlife viewing, a sort of open air biology lesson everywhere you turn. Stay tuned for Nicky's report on his blog page!

09 - Pacific Crossing

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18-Mar-2012, Anchored off Cristobal, Galapagos

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...

09 - Pacific Crossing

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