This incredible day started with an early outing among flamingos, sea turtles and blue-footed boobies in the mysterious island of Charles. Eager explorers joined as for a photography walk, while others hiked to the interior of the island. Our guests had a great opportunity to discover more about the natural history of the island, while also experiencing the occasional challenges of nature photography.
In Punta Cormorant, the brackish lagoon located behind the beach, wading birds wandered around the island looking for food. The most iconic species today were the flamingos; they were dancing, filtering the blackish water and nesting. This rolling island is dotted with numerous extinct parasitic volcanic cones amidst a variety of scrubby vegetation, which provides a great opportunity for landscape photography. From shore we also sighted green pacific sea turtles that are becoming very active this time a year, due to the approach of the warm season.
After breakfast, we went for a Zodiac ride in Champion Islet, where we sighted a variety of sea birds such as shearwaters, brown noddies and tropicbirds that nest on the eroded cracks of the ancient lava flows. Also, this is the only island where we can still find a small population of the Floreana mockingbirds, which were driven to near extinction by feral cats, rats and other introduced predators on the main island. Our morning activities ended with snorkeling and glass-bottom boat rides among a great variety of fish and young sea lions.
Our afternoon activities began with kayaking along the eroded shoreline of Bahia del Correo. Paddling in this calm bay, we saw sea turtles, eagle rays, and some sea birds perched on the rocks after foraging offshore. This human history of this area goes back almost two centuries, and it is full of some very interesting stories. Once on land we visited the post office barrel that used to serve whalers and buccaneers as the only way to communicate with their families. We put our post offices in the barrel, and searched for letters that were addressed to our hometown areas, keeping up the tradition and the honor code of hand delivered letters and postcards. Later our Zodiac drivers took us along the coastline for a ride to end this breathtaking day on the fabled island of Floreana.
