After our time in Peru we headed into Ecuador and flew to the Galapagos Islands where we spent a little over a week. We did one day's diving from Puerto Ayora and then one week on a luxury cruise boat touring some of the islands. This article will focus on the day diving.
We dived with Scuba Iguana, the oldest dive centre in the Galapagos and also the most recommended. Overall, we were happy with their service. We dived the Bartomele and Cousins sites and there were 6 customers and 2 divemasters. We were split into 2 groups diving separately but on a similar plan - so there were 3 customers per divemaster. The other customers were relatively inexperienced divers with 8-25 dives each. The kit was good - all fully functioning and fairly new. We also had full length 7mm wetsuits even though the water temperature was 25 degrees. I've been given a lot thinner wetsuit for lower temperatures elsewhere!
Our guide was called Africa, a girl that either was very quiet or didn't speak much English. The briefing was conducted solely by the other guide, who I can't remember the name of. He seemed very experienced and competent. Our first dive was good, we saw turtles and sharks and many other animals. But we were disappointed that Africa led the dive too fast for us to see everything we wanted and take photos. Also the third diver in our group had a much lower air consumption than us meaning that even with him using Africa's alternate we still had to surface after 45 minutes when we could have stayed down for 60. In the other group two of the customers had surfacing after running low on air after 45 minutes while the guide and the other customer managed 1 hour. After the dive I asked if the groups would be changing for the second dive but was told they would be the same. I probably should've have requested that we be swapped over on grounds of air consumption but didn't want to rock the boat.
The second dive was also good, more turtles than we could count, several white tips and 2 hammerheads! But again Africa led the dive too fast for my liking and we had to end the dive early because of the other diver's air consumption. Again the other group had also split up due to air consumption. Pretty frustrating! Also our average depth on the first dive had been around 15m with a maximum at 18m. On the second dive the divemaster led us to around 20m maximum with an average of 18m. Not a massive reverse profile but not something I would expect from a highly rated PADI dive centre guiding inexperienced divers.
All of the above aside, we had two great dives and would've loved to have done more diving in the Galapagos. The wildlife is fantastic and the water is warm and clear. And to top it all off we got engaged on the second dive of the day! Nick pulled out his Advanced Open Water card partway through the dive (between turtles and sharks!) and he had written "Claire, will you marry me?" on it. I was completely surprised and stunned! I had no idea he was planning it at all, but it was the most perfect proposal I could've hoped for and made the rest of the week so romantic!
