Galapagos Island Diving Cruise – Darwin Island & Wolf Island | 8 Days 7 Nigths

Detailed Itinerary:

Thursday

AM: Arrival to San Cristobal Island airport, where our guides will be to greet you and escort you to the yacht. Onboard, the staff will show you all the services we have on board and cabin assignment.

PM: After lunch, everyone has an equipment check and a one-on-one with the guide for details on your diving experience. This will follow by a safety briefing and emergency drill procedures with the yacht crew. Check dive will be at Lobos island where you may see white tip sharks, sea turtles, rays, and schools of reef fish.

In the evening you will have our welcome cocktail and presentation of the boat’s crew followed by your first dinner on board.

Friday

AM:. Punta Carrion : Provide viewing of sea lions, sea turtles, various species of sharks and eels, and schools of pelagic fishes. One of the most visited dive sites for day tours out of Puerto Ayora. There divers can observe hammerhead sharks, Galápagos sharks, manta rays, eagle rays, sea turtles, schools of fishes, sea lions, and fur seals. The underwater walls of the rocks have a high abundance of sessile organisms creating a spectacular color array.

PM: Baltra NE. This morning you will have a check dive in Baltra NE where you will have ideal conditions to feel comfortable with the equipment and get ready for diving in Wolf and Darwin areas. You may see some white tip sharks, Galapagos sharks, hammer head sharks, school of reef fish, rays, eels, and barracudas

Saturday

Diving begins early to get in all 4 dives in a 12-hour day. A night dive (optional) where you can see garden eels and the red-lipped batfish on a sandy bottom.

AM: Wolf is one of the reasons Galapagos is on most divers’ bucket list. Scientists have designated Wolf and Darwin (together as they are so close together) as the sharkiest place on earth because they have the largest biomass of sharks on the planet, 17.5 tons of sharks per hectare (2.47 acres).  Only divers visit Wolf. There is no chumming in Galapagos. This is where sharks come naturally. There are no land visits. Wolf is located 115 miles north of the central islands.

PM: Sightings include huge schools of hammerhead sharks, Galapagos sharks, whale sharks (in season), silky sharks, eagle rays, sea lions, fur seals, mantas, turtles, jacks, trumpetfish, butterfly fish, morish idols, moray eels and dolphins. Some sites at Wolf are covered in coral and all of the tropical fish species that live on coral reefs. Dive sites include Shark Bay, The Landslide, La Banana and Islote La Ventana. On the island itself, there are hundreds of thousands of seabirds including all 3 types of boobies in Galapagos – red footed, blue footed and nazca. There are frigates, pelicans, lava gulls and red billed tropicbirds.

Sunday

Darwin’s Arch is an icon, the symbol of diving the Galapagos. It is located 229 km / 142 miles north of the central islands. In addition to Wolf, this is where we find massive schools of hammerheads. Huge, pregnant whale sharks pass through Darwin Island each year for reasons unknown.

Darwin is the warmest dive site in Galapagos due to the tropical Panama current. You spend a lot of the dive stationary, on a platform that drops into the blue where hammerheads swim against the current. It is like being on the side of a hammerhead highway watching traffic pass. You leave the platform to swim out into the blue when a whale shark is spotted. That sometimes means swimming through the hammerheads, a truly magnificent experience you will carry with you forever.

Monday

AM: Darwin Island. We have 2 more dives at Darwin in the morning.

PM: Wolf Island. We have 1-2 more dives at Wolf in the afternoon. There is an optional night dive at the Anchorage site. Anchorage has a sandy bottom where you may see garden eels and the red-lipped batfish.

Tuesday

AM: Cabo Douglas (Fernandina Island). The westernmost island in Galapagos, Fernandina is an active volcano. It has erupted twice in the last decade. It is the ‘hot spot’ in Galapagos.

This is the only site on liveaboard itineraries where you can see diving Marine Iguanas feeding underwater. You also see Penguins feeding on tiny silver Sardines using schools of black striped salemas as cover. Turtles are especially abundant at Cabo Douglas which is probably why this is a likely location to site Orcas.

PM: Punta Vicente Roca (Isabela Island). If you look at a map, Isabela Island looks uncannily like a seahorse. Punta Vicente Roca is located on the northwestern side of Isabela just below the ‘mouth’ of the seahorse. Isabela has 5 active volcanoes.

Punta Vicente Roca is a mola mola (Sunfish) cleaning station, has large turtle populations, the endemic Galapagos bullhead shark, penguins, sea horses, sea lions and many species of fish not found elsewhere in Galapagos. It is not uncommon to find yourself diving with an endemic flightless cormorant.

Wednesday

AM: Cousins Rock.  Cousins is a small rock, the remains of an eroded crater sticking up out of the sea. On the eastern side, the rock cascades down in a series of recessed ledges strewn with black coral, which is bright green under the water. Taking cover in the coral, you may find seahorses, frogfish, octopus, turtles and the elusive longnose hawkfish. It is not unusual to spot pelagic from Cousins including mantas, eagle rays, mobulas and hammerhead. Sea lions are fur seals are also at Cousins. 1-2 dives depending on the mood of the divers.

PM: We disembark head for a reserve in the Santa Cruz Highlands to see the iconic Galapagos Tortoise in its natural habitat. After the Highlands, we descend into the largest town in Galapagos, Puerto Ayora. Our farewell dinner will be at a restaurant in Puerto Ayora.

Thursday

AM: After breakfast disembark in San Cristobal island for your return flight to the continent.