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Gordon's Rock.

I woke up before dawn this morning, had some tea, put on two layers of 7-mil wetsuit and climbed in a dingy at about 5:50am for the trip out to Gordon's Rock and my first dive in the Galapagos. I went with Washington and a diver from our sister boat the Yolita. Dawn is a good time to see marine life, but dives were scheduled at this time mostly because there is no time in the middle of the day to fit them into the itinerary. So if I want to dive, I have to do it while everyone else sleeps.

Gordon's Rock is a famed site, known for large life and an abundance of hammerhead sharks. The only sharks I've ever really had the chance to dive among are white-tipped reef and nurse sharks. White tips look like decent sharks, but there is just something about them that lets you know they are pretty harmless, and nurses don't even have teeth (I don't think). So the chance to get in the water with some 3-meter proper sharks had me excited enough to not even be worrying about my lack of sleep - or the fact that the water in the Galapagos is very, very cold.

Most of the tropics and equatorial waters of the world are rather warm, even in the Pacific, but the Galapagos are fed by two major currents (sometimes three) and they bring cold, nutrient-filled water up from the deep, making the islands a big draw for marine predators and their surrounding water much colder than one would expect for lying right on top of the equator. These heavily stirred waters also produce local permutations and strong surface currents around the islands, making diving risky in certain situations. Divers are filled with stories about wild, unpredictable cross currents and downward pulls that have killed all sorts of people. The diving is, in reality, not that dangerous, but many people are led to believe so - and perhaps rightly; if you go where you shouldn't, you might not come back up. But whatever. That's true everywhere.

Of course, none of these terrible things happened, and we had a wonderful dive. Perhaps one of my best ever. Highlights:

• A massive school of eagle rays swimming over the top of us. I counted 47. I think the most I've seen together before was, like, five.
• Sea turtles. You see them all the time, but they're still cool.
• Hammerheads. Somewhat languid swimmers, but the largest sharks I've been in the water with; also one of the strangest looking animals in the world. I don't know why they have their eyes out on the side. It doesn't make sense. Anyway, saw a ton of them, they were huge, very cool.
• Having to hang on to rocks for dear life just to not be swept away in the current. This was toward the end when we came out into the open off of the rock and ran into those currents everyone talks about. Not deadly or anything, but a lot of work just to swim.
• Playing with sea lions. They lose interest after about 20 seconds, but they're pretty cool to swim with.

It made me feel good that the dive was what I had hoped it would be. Helped let me feel like I wasn't wasting my money by coming to the islands.

The rest of the day was a wildlife fair with us seeing so many different species in about eight hours, that I have already managed to forget pretty much all of them. We spent the afternoon around Santa Fe and its environs and then got the boat ready to sail down to Española. I fell asleep at about 8pm.

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