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 The Reina Silvia is comfortably set-up for scuba divers. The crew have worked together for many years and you can tell. They run a smooth ship and there is always time for a joke and a smile. The Reina Silvia is spotless. Tanks were always filled with more bar/psi than I have ever experienced on any other liveaboard.
All dive briefings and gearing up is done on the upper deck after which you get into one of two dinghies who are waiting to transport you to the dive site. Groups are
kept small and the dive sites are never far away.
The dinghies are manned by two experienced crew men each who are very helpful getting you into your bcd and always right there to get you out of the water at the end of the dive.
The Galapágos have a very interesting geographical position in the South-East pacific, being the meeting point of at least three major currents; the cold Peru Oceanic current, the warm Panama current and the equatorial undercurrent. These are the main avenues used by fishes to reach the islands and explains the large variety in marine life.
Our first dive was at Rabida Island which is a small island next to Santiago in the main island group. We hovered between 9-18 meters the whole dive and saw a white tip reef shark and a manta ray but the visibility wasn't good enough to take photos. The water felt cold at around 22 centigrade and I was glad to be wearing my hood.
After the second land excursion we sailed off on the long voyage to the north of the Galapágos. We had planned to do most of the diving at the northern islands of Darwin and Wolf. The waters around these islands are known as world class. Darwin and Wolf are about 135 miles from the main island group and it takes an overnight crossing to get there. When they finally do come into sight there are nothing but a rock in the ocean! But birds everywhere and you can't wait to get into the water.
Wolf and Darwin Islands, also known as Wenman and Culpepper respectively, are two eroded volcanoes located on a volcanic ridge aligned northwest-southeast. Though Wolf reaches a maximum elevation of only 250 m and Darwin only 165 m above sea level, the islands are only the tips of much larger volcanoes that rise more than 1000 m above the sea floor. Both volcanoes are now extinct. These two small islets are inhabited only by sea birds and are rarely visited, except by scuba divers.
We did a total of four dives at Darwin at a dive site called the Arch. During most of the dives there was no sun which didn't help with the visibility but we did see large schools of hammerheads and some beautiful blue spotted eagle rays and a black tip reef shark. The average depth was 17m and the current was quite strong. There were many green turtles and on one dive a dolphin came up to us to play!
But no whale shark yet, where is it?...
 The fourth and last day we left Darwin and back-tracked to nearby Wolf to try our luck there. We were about 15 minutes into our first dive when we finally saw one. There it was in the distance away from the wall...! Paco, our very entertaining Spanish diver, spotted it first and went for it. We had to fin very fast to keep up with it as it was swimming away from the reef into the blue. It lasted only a few minutes, but what a beautiful sight!
« Click here to see the whale shark video
We returned to the same spot three times trying to find it again, but no luck this time. The marine life was very good at Wolf that day; other than the whale shark we saw hundreds of turtles, lots of free swimming eels and large schools of hammerheads. There were also scorpion fish, surgeon fish, puffers, butterfly, parrot fish, queen wrasse, jacks and sea lions.
We didn't see more whale sharks but that's how it goes. You never know where they hang out exactly. A group of divers who dived Wolf and Darwin the week before us saw eight (!) whale sharks total in a week, which proves that you just have to be at the right place at the right time sometimes.
It was time to leave the North and start our 15 hours crossing back to the main islands.
 We arrived the next morning, ready to dive Cousin's Rock. This site is right next to the island of Santiago and known for its large seahorses. Again the sun was absent and the conditions under water not ideal but regardless it was an interesting two dives. We saw several sea horses who were hiding in the black gorgonians. There were also countless beautiful starfish in different colors, damsel fish, bat rays and and again the graceful spotted eagle rays. We spotted a large school of pacific barracudas, crabs and gobies. The best part of the dives at Cousin's Rock are the sea lions. Especially the young ones would come check out the divers and wanted to play, and play...and play! They wouldn't get enough and it was so much fun to try to imitate them which they, in turn, loved about us divers so they kept coming back for more.
Click here for an excellent overview of the diving at Darwin and Wolf Islands, Galapágos.
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