AlexandrA comes home

Adios Galapagos!
Well max and i have lost another crew, Anne's gone and Sandy is on, I promise we do wash. Trailing the Galapagos Islands now behind us, we head for the Marquise islands. Having travelled a total of 2800nm since leaving St Martin we now need to cover 3000nm to make the Marquise. Well stocked with provisions and fuel our test will be mentally, to keep sane with the idle time. Having doubled our standard fuel capacity from 400 to 800 litres we have sufficient fuel to have one motor operating for up to 50% of the time. Assuming the trade winds are kind (one expects there to be good winds 2/3 of the time).
]The fuel for locals at the Galapagos would have to be possibly the cheapest in the world, $1 per gallon, 25 cents per litre. Obviously subsidized by the government but not it would seem us yachties. We pay $5.25 per gallon. We had to acquire a special permit from the captinary to be able to purchase at all. There we numerous offers from our water taxis to supply fuel at $4.50. Even when sailing well we still need to motor or have the generator operating for some time to make sufficient power to operate the 2 fridges and one freezer, make water and heat water for showers. 4 hours per day should be plenty to account for all.
The Galapagos, as per most places in the world that are unique, has the locals not understanding how special it is. There would, for what i assume by South American standards, be exceptional efforts to maintain the balance of human footprint on the environment. The islands flora and fauna suffer greatly from introduced species such as rats, cats and dogs along with others that have effected the environment. One such sad story is lonesome George. A giant tortoise found in 1971 and bought back to Santa Cruz in 1972, he was the last tortoise on one of the islands. The giant tortoises live for 150-200 years and 300 years ago there were 250,000 tortoises in total on the islands. There are many stories for each island how these populations became extinct or near extinct since man arrived. One other island had 14 left and on another all the iguanas became extinct in the quickest ever extinction of a reptile while occupied by US forces in WW2. The tortoise breeding programs are currently extensive and when large enough at about 2-3 years old they are released as the ferrel animals will not harm them.
The uniqueness of the islands I did not fully understand. I knew from history Charles Darwin formed the basis of his theory of evolution from his visit here. Each island in the archipelago has similar animals but they all differ, the giant tortoise, finch and iguanas are good examples. Each has its own differences from this separation. The largest island, Isabel, has 8 different species of giant tortoises. Obviously as one can see they are not particularly mobile units. As the island has 7 volcanos the larva flows created ridges isolating each area and hence they all evolve differently.
Well I obviously survived another near death experience from consuming tripe! The following 12 hours from consumption saw my joints swell and throat near close over. Fortunately this meant we could now do some recreation. We booked a dive and left at 6am, a 2 hour, at times hard bumpy ride saw us to our site. The current was strong the visibility not terrific. Starting in about 5m of water we back flipped in off the boat side to be bang in the middle of a massive school of striped fish about 20cm long. The bottom at this point was a little sandy and when grouped we headed toward the point we had stopped behind. Swimming with the island to our left we had the abyss to our right. Hoping to see Manta Rays and Hammer head schools. The water at time was warm but the current definitely had some very cool patches. We encountered seals, turtles, barracuda and various parrot fish. Lots of marine life as one would expect. The last 1/3 of our dive saw us head off the safety of the rocks into the deep blue. Sitting at 10-15 meters with I don’t know how maybe 100m below u, we were not disappointed as 3 manta rays circled. Again the visibility was difficult and we fortunately or unfortunately did not view any hammer head schools. They number up to 100 at times but I’m unsure until I encountered them directly how much piss I would put in my wet suit. Having not dived for a couple of years I needed the next day to recover. We also visited the largest island, Isabel. Our guide was terrific and we came to many land and marine iguanas, pink flamingos, penguins and seals. A snorkel at the end saw better visibility in the shallows than our dive.