Galapagos Islands, 26th February 2001
The ship has moved around to Baltra and is departing from there tonight to set sail for Easter island.  The Voyage Crew enjoyed their boat tour of the islands and the permanent crew got a day or two off on Santa Cruz. All have said what an incredible place is.

Voyage Crew Kirsten Bowdich has been keeping an excellent log of the voyage - this is an exatract of her account of their Galapagos tour aboard the Aida Maria:

"  18th Feb........ Our first stop was North Seymour where we saw nesting colonies of frigate birds and blue-footed boobys.  It's amazing how unafraid the animals are.  They really let us get quite close.  Lots of sea lions everywhere.  We set off at like 4am for our anchor for today.  It was a bit alarming when the anchor started going up at that hour,  and then it seemed I had no sooner gotten back to sleep, than the stupid thing woke me up going back down.  I walked up on deck at close to dawn, and it was beautiful with all these little volcanic islands floating around on the sea.  Our first stop today was China Hat, which looks just like one.  Once again, tons of sea lions, including babies, frolicking in the water and napping in the bushes.  It's quite something to snorkel with sea lions (Well, they weren't snorkeling, but we were)   We had to stop though when Dad showed up.  The males are considerably more aggressive than the females and he didn't seem too inclined to frolic with us so we moved on to look at marine iguanas instead.  After lunch and our scheduled nap, we set out for Bartolome Island where we trudged up 400 steps to the top of a volcano that provides and beautiful panoramic view of the area.  It's apparently the most photographed view of the Galapagos.  The area is all volcanic of course, and the landscape is really neat with all the accompanying formations and flows.  It's beautiful in a stark sort of way.  On the way over we saw some penguins (yes, there is a variety that lives here) and when we were snorkeling one swam right underneath us.   During the snorkeling part of the day I also saw some rays, a white tipped shark (which thankfully seemed uninterested in me) and a sea cucumber along with the requisite tropical fish.  After climbing down from the lookout, we walked through an isthmus of mangroves to the other bay where we saw turtles floating off shore and a black tip shark on patrol.

22-Feb-01: Galapagos Still

We spent the morning on Tues wandering around James Bay.  it was low tide and the tide pools were teeming with life.  Lots of crabs, iguanas, & seal lions of course.  I saw one crab with a lucky catch of a small squid that it was dragging along behind it. There was a pool full of baby hermit crabs tooling around in their tiny shells.  In one area was a sort of grotto/blowhole place that had a group of fur seals thoroughly enjoying themselves, floating on their sides, flippers in air, or doing summersaults.  They are more playful than the regular sea lions.  Afterwards was the requisite snorkeling while the boat crew had a rousing soccer game with the crew of one of the other boats.   A while after we left for Rabida Island, we were run down by the other boat that was carrying the rest of our group.  It seems they were trying to return Bill, who was left behind on the beach.  Guess our guide forgot to take a head count before we pulled anchor.  Needless to say, after that our guide always took a head count and Bill was always the first one we looked for.

I was feeling reclusive so passed on the Rabida trip in the afternoon.  It seems I missed out on swimming with sea lions.  It figures.  I was reading a good book though.  Tues night we headed to Porta Ayora.

We started off Wed, boarding a bus for the highlands of Sta Cruz - The island with the main town of Porta Ayora - We saw what were essentially collapsed lava bubbles.  We're not talking little things here.   These guys were several hundred feet deep.  After oohing and ahhing a bunch of plant life, we moved into a town where we oohed and ahhed a bunch of food type plant life - Banana trees, papayas, oranges, that sort of thing.  We made a couple stops to take important pictures of cemeteries and turtle crossings and then back for our lunch and nap.   After our siesta, we all trudged up to the Darwin Center to learn about how Man is trashing/has trashed the Galapagos and what people are trying to do to save it.   There is a big area with tortoises where they are taking eggs from the various islands and hatching and raising the babies until they are old enough to survive on their own. The population has been so decimated both from past practices regarding tortoises, which I don't even want to go into, and enemies in the form of man induced dogs and pigs to name a couple, that they cannot survive any other way.  We saw Lonesome George which is an approx 120 year old tortoise who is the last of his species (race?) and when he dies, that particular variety will officially become extinct.  There were other enormous tortoises that aren't extinct yet and we saw a few of them also.  These are some large puppies...."

19th February 2001
The ship  arrived at the Galapagos islands at 1000 hours local time on the 17th .  Soren Larsen is anchored at Puerto Aryoa and plans to stay here until the 24th.

Voyage Crew are commencing an island tour with a locally chartered boat and will explore islands off Santa Cruz.

NEW

Voyage Crew Memories
Ian Marshall's Atlantic Crossing
Voy 142, Dec 2000

See pictures of the Curacao - Panama voyage at Voyage Crew Bob Lewis' own webpage at http://www.nythfa.freeserve.co.uk/soren/sorenlarsen.html

See pics from John Homes and Alan Murphy of the Grenada-Curacao leg:
here

First Mate Sally Anderson sends us her  WebLog report.

Cocos island, 12th Feb
The ship arrived Cocos island which is about 600 miles of the Panamanian coast. This is tiny outpost of Costa Rica. They anchored around midnight on the 11th and stayed until late afternoon on the 12th. They now have light airs and are motorsailing towards Galapagos .

Gulf of Panama, 8th February 2001
Now sailing in the southern reaches of the Gulf of Panama. New VC board 6^th and we departed that afternoon. Sailed off anchorage under tops'ls, t'gallant & working staysails. Overnight the fair NW freshens to F5 & veers to the north.

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VOYAGE CREW RETURNING HOME:  Scan and email or post your pictures of your voyage! If you have an account of your trip or a special moment then let us a know. Your tales can be included in the Voyage Log!

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