Our last full day on board and a relaxing start with a morning zodiac ride around Witch Hill area of the coast of San Cristobel and time spent on the shore just watching blue footed boobies and pelicans fishing, seals playing around, marine iguanas and various finches.
We have a good crowd of passengers on board – 15 all together, consisting of a German couple, an Austrian/ Hungarian couple, a Swiss/ Polish couple, and American mother and daughter pair travelling with a couple of friends, all from California, a son and his elderly but active father (85) from Kansas & San Antonio respectively and an Australian couple, both of whom are keen birders and have all the photographic equipment. Everybody mixes and gets on well together. The public areas on board the Majestic are spacious and comfortable and the only drawback is the engine noise when under way, which is usually at night!
After lunch, we sailed to Kicker Rock, a bifurcated outcrop a couple of miles offshore. There, we piled into the zodiac for a last snorkelling session to see sharks in the narrow channel between the two rocks. The sea was really choppy and I am not the strongest swimmer, so, after a few minutes, I had to go back to the zodiac. So I missed seeing the mass of Galapagos sharks in the gap, but I did go in the water again on the other side, where it was a bit calmer and was rewarded with a single shark which came and swam a bit too close to me (!) and lots of turtles, as well as a massive bait ball of fish swirling around. The water was also very cold – even though we are virtually on the Equator, the Humboldt current brings cold water up from the Antarctic – so the hot chocolate waiting for us when we climbed back on to the boat was very welcome.
