Commodore
February 20, 2023

Monday 20th February – Meeting Claudia

We decided to have an easy day booking tours and snorkelling locally. We all went to the Concha de Perla beach which was close to the dinghy and ferry dock. I wasn’t feeling that great as I felt I was getting a bit of a cold, blocked nose . But the others had a good snorkel with marine life teeming around them. Swimming with iguanas, seals and turtles right there so close to all the hubbub of town.

Frigate birds dancing around our anchorage

Gorgeous beaches on land

Such chilled sea lions snoozing in the mangroves

Life everywhere

Totally chilled wildlife everywhere, we can’t decide if the Zebra crossings on the roads are for humans or wildlife, there are so many sea lions and iguanas crossing

Iguana sand trails

We had an abortive traipse around town looking for eggs, it appears the carnival has used up every last egg here too, there were none in San Cristobal either. We finally headed off to find Claudia at the Pink Iguana beach, what a surprise to find she was actually a woman and from Argentina, but has lived all over the world until she found her happy home here on the island in the 1990’s. She was extremely helpful getting things sorted for us in her eccentric gravely voice. Her bar was rather lovely, the last bar along the beach, and completely overrun with iguanas. She proudly told us about the 200 odd young iguanas that stay on her balcony, and was cautioning us about all the nesting iguanas nesting in the sand all around the bar.

Nobody accepts credit cards and all tours have to be paid in cash with only the dodgiest of ATMs around. So all a bit of a logistical ordeal with tours ranging from $40 to $140 per person. Han was so instrumental in getting this all sorted as we had been told all the tours were full, we managed to get the Lava Tunnels tour which is the highlight of the island tours, booked for Friday when the weather should be better. We spent a few hours organising our trips while the rest had a swim at the beach until the down pour happened. Luckily we could shelter in the bar, it chucked it down and soon all the sandy streets in town were absolutely flooded. The biggest rain in two years apparently.

The Pink Iguana wasn’t actually open because of the carnival but we managed to get some delicious coconuts. We then received a message from the Arc group chat, that boats were dragging their anchors, particularly Hoka Hei which was the boat in front of us. We made the decision we had to get back on board promptly, to be on hand so once again we missed Widge and Edmund. Luckily they have found accommodation which was hard to come by during the carnival, and they had a very successful Lava Tunnel trip today which sounded amazing.

All was fine back on board and it appeared to be rather a false panic, Rowan’s 50kgs plus anchor is doing its work well. He was commenting on some of the monohulls that are heavier than us and only have 20kg anchors. We ate on board again, somehow team work produced a delicious meal keeping the meat eaters and vegetarians very happy.