As a keen Scuba Diver i'm very happy to find myself in this part of the world. Certainly a lot of decent diving opportunities to be had - not all in the warm waters of the Caribbean either. Despite the cold waters of Patagonia, the diving with Sealions in Puerto Madryn will always remain a fond memory.

However, one of the highlights of this South America trip (and I must admit there have been many) was planned to be a diving trip to The Galapagos islands. The trip was scheduled for September and was to be 8 days diving around Darwin & Wolf islands - famed for prolific numbers of Hammerhead Sharks and, particularly in September, a large number of Whalesharks. In the 10 years i've been diving, despite my best efforts, I have never seen a Whaleshark. Diving at Darwin and Wolf islands in September is just about as close as you will ever get to a guaranteed sighting of a Whaleshark. A fairly recent diving/travel blog I was reading reported sightings of 52 (!!) Whalesharks in a 3 days period at Darwin. Well, i'd be happy with one!

However, the bad news is that there have been recent changes to the licencing of dive operators in Galapagos - at least as far as access to Darwin and Wolf goes and of 14 operators only 2 can now operate in this area. So in short, the Galapagos diving trip is cancelled :-(

This is one very disappointed diver. Maybe i'm just not meant to see a Whaleshark? Maybe its just a reason to come back again when the licencing is all sorted out? I'll keep you posted...