Floreana Island
Starting early in the morning might not sound very tempting, but it was a great opportunity to learn about human history and the traditional hand-deliver mailing system at Post Office Bay. Our young explorers took their handmade postcards with beautiful drawings of turtles and marine life, hoping they would be picked up and delivered by other guests who come to the islands and experience how pirates and whalers communicated in the past.
The temperature of the sea was close to 67F, a bit cold to be in the water, but this meant that more marine life was available. Our guests had the chance to explore Champion Islet in different ways: snorkeling in deep waters with white tip reef sharks and curious sea lions, or looking for fish and sea stars from the glass bottom boat. During the Zodiac ride, we were very lucky, we found at least eight Floreana mockingbirds out of 50 individuals that are left in this small islet, and two couples of red billed tropic birds nesting very close on the cliffs.
In the afternoon at Punta Cormorant, we enjoyed stretching with our Wellness Specialist Hilda before walking on the green sandy beach looking for pencil sea urchins, olivine crystals and crabs. At the other side of the point we saw many stingrays so close to the shore that we had to be careful not to step on them. On our way back we enjoyed the landscape and the endemic vegetation that is growing back after the goats almost exterminated it, like the Floreana daisy tree, Lecocarpus pinnatifidus, and the Scalesia villosa.
We finished the day with an entertaining story about the mysteries of the people that lived in Floreana in the 1920’s as we navigated to the west side of the archipelago for tomorrow’s activities.
