Today we arrived to the first island that was colonized by Ecuador in 1832. We started at 6:30 a.m., landing on Punta Cormorant. It is a marvelous place; there are flamingos and the endemic vegetation is amazing. The beach behind the point is a great nesting area for marine turtles. Once we started our walk we found a lonely flamingo very close to shore looking for brine shrimp in the brackish water lagoon. We continued to the gorgeous white sandy beach and there we saw a few fresh sea turtle tracks. This beach is locally known as “la picona,” meaning stinging beach. This name refers to the presence of sting rays and even thou we were not able to find any, this is the place to find them in large numbers.
After this early walk, we went back on board, had a nutritious breakfast and motored towards Champion Islet; the very rare Floreana mockingbird is found there. Floreana was devastated years ago because of the introduced feral goats. We have successfully removed all alien species and now we are thinking about reproducing mockingbirds to restore their population back on Floreana.
This morning we were very lucky and found several Floreana mockingbirds. In addition, we also saw blue footed boobies, nazca boobies, brown pelicans, Galapagos shearwaters, red-billed tropic birds and several juvenile Galapagos sea lions. Later on we came back to Champion Islet to snorkel. It was an amazing experience for our guests. We saw several schools of fish, sting rays sea stars, sea urchins and lobsters. I found a hawk’s billed turtle, which is very rare and only seen once in a blue moon. One of the best experiences for our travelers in Galapagos is to have juvenile sea lions playing with them in the water, they are the most friendly and playful animal on the islands. Sometimes they nibble the fins of our snorkelers just like a playful dog. Wildlife in Galapagos tends to be very inquisitive and comes towards us instead of moving away. Humans here become part of their world as we treat nature with respect.
The other surprise of the day came as we were having lunch. Our expedition leader announced that bottle nose dolphins were close to our ship, swimming and jumping, a big natural show. Nature is nature, and here every day is an unexpected experience.
This afternoon we had different options, some of our guests went kayaking while others enjoyed a relaxing moment on the beach of Post Office Bay. Later we all went to look for postcards and letters inside an old wooden barrel; just as the whalers did in the 1800s, we picked up some mail to hand deliver it back home, and also left some of our own postcards. One day somebody will deliver those and continue this ancient tradition.
