Galápagos

Ten days aboard the liveaboard Galapagos Sky, out of San Cristóbal and up to Darwin and Wolf, the two remote islands at the far north of the archipelago. Twenty-five dives, to 33 m, in water that swung from 27 °C up north down to 18–19 °C in the cold upwellings to the west.

It started with a beer and a copy of On the Origin of Species, which felt like the right reading. The first days were a mix of shore visits and dives. On land there were sea lions dozing on the rocks with Sally Lightfoot crabs stepping over them, a Galápagos penguin (the only penguin north of the equator) and blue-footed boobies on every ledge. Underwater, in water cold enough to notice, marine iguanas grazed the algae in the shallows, the only lizards in the world that feed at sea. Down on the bottom were a bullhead shark, a red-lipped batfish propped up on its fins, a green turtle, a hawkfish and a nudibranch.

Then came the long run north to Darwin and Wolf, which is what everyone comes for. The water warmed up and the sharks arrived: scalloped hammerheads on every dive, singly and in schools fading into the haze, Galápagos sharks over the rocks, and on 1 June a whale shark gliding past the divers at Darwin. Topside, Darwin’s pillars (all that’s left since the arch collapsed in 2021) were surrounded by frigatebirds, Nazca boobies and tropicbirds, and a male frigatebird took to riding on the mast.

On the way back south there was an octopus in the rocks and playful sea lions on the last dive. The final afternoon was up in the highlands with the giant tortoises, Darwin’s finches and yellow warblers.