Yesterday I passed on class, and we instead headed out to snorkel at Leon Dormido, aka Kicker Rock. Alright, I wasn’t really skipping class- but when class consists entirely of snorkeling at an awesome rock formation in the middle of the ocean, it starts to lose its academic feel. Because our class was too big to fit into 1 boat, we split into groups and took off along the coast, passing the long delayed freightor in the harbor. When you live on an island where the only locally produced goods are fish and fruit, it becomes kind of a problem when such vital things as rice, medicine, beer, and gas don’t arrive on schedule….
Before we went to Leon Dormido, the sleeping lion, we stopped at small Lobo island by the coast of San Cristobal to snorkel briefly in the shallow water there. Where we jumped out of the boat was too deep to see bottom, but within a minute’s swim we were near the shore of jumbled volcanic rocks, checking out the fish swimming below. Little damsel fish were everywhere, guarding the patches of algae they farm, and at one point a big school of surgeon fish, who are dinner plate sized and get their name from the scalpel-sharp spines on their tail, swam below us, munching on the algae on the black rocks. Unfortunately, the island didn’t quite live up to its name, and only a few sea lions, lobos marinos, swam by as we were in the water, not stopping to check us out.
Leon Dormido, with the channel between the 2 halves
From there, I rode on the top of the boat as we headed to Leon Dormido. The rock itself is really more of a mountain than anything else- over 500 feet tall at its highest point, the whole rock is the remains of a volcanic cone that through erosion and wave action, now is surrounded by cliffs on all sides. The main hunk of rock is the largest, with a smaller, narrow knife edge of rock bursting out of the water in front of the main mass, creating a 20-foot wide channel of water between the two. Before we went into the water, our boats took a lap around the island to get a look at the thing, and check the sea conditions. Finally, we pulled up next to the end of the channel, and enter the water. The sea was a little choppy, but not too bad once we entered the channel and its shallower water. “Shallower”. We still couldn’t really see the bottom, but when we entered we could see the silhouette of a couple rays near the bottom. The rock walls were covered in algae, barnacles, and whelks, with crabs clinging to the vertical surface above the height of the waves. Below us in the channel, a big green sea turtle swam about, and I saw my first shark of the day. It was a little Galapagos shark, maybe 4 feet long about 20 feet below me. After we left the channel, we swam around the sheltered side of the rock, spotting a couple more big sea turtles and 4 more Galapagos sharks. While I swam above one, it came up to sea what I was, getting within 10 feet before diving back down out of sight. It was really awesome!
A galapagos shark. Alas, not one of my photos
After we finally returned to the boat, after staying in the water as long as we could, we headed back to San Cristobal and anchored in the meter deep water off a beautiful beach, eating before I jumped in the water for a last bit of snorkeling before we returned to the water.
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