Floreana Island
This morning we had the opportunity to walk a green sand beach and a white sandy beach in the same morning. The origin of these two geological formations is completely different from each other; the white one is purely from organic matter such as shells of mollusks, crustaceans and coral; the green one is the crystallization of minerals within a volcano. Over time and with heat, coming out to the surface with volcanic activity, these crystals are deposited on beaches and experience erosion by wave action, wind and rain.
The white sand beach is a good nesting ground for he Pacific green sea turtles due to its formation and easy access for these reptiles. At this time of the year they are hatching. We saw frigate birds gliding along the beach, waiting for the turtle’s babies to emerge from the sand. We also saw turtles tracks along the beach, which is very unusual for this time of the year.
To continue with our activities we had to sail for an hour to a tiny Islet known as Champion. This is a good place for water activities. The abundance of marine life, lots of fishes, sharks, and rays were enjoyed by our guests, and the playful Galápagos sea lions really helped to make this activity so interesting. We also explored Champion on board our Zodiacs to look for the Floreana mockingbird, which is confined to two very small islands. We were very successful in finding them together with many other beautiful marine animal sightings.
Early in the afternoon we took our Zodiacs again to explore a place known as a sea lion rookery. It is called that because it is covered with these attractive marine mammals. We also saw a single Galápagos penguin fishing by itself, together with blue-footed boobies.
We spotted many other spectacular animals as well: brown pelicans, great blue herons, marine iguanas, cattle egrets, eagle rays, sting rays, turtles, pelicans and frigate birds. Before returning to the National Geographic Islander we disembarked in a historical place to visit the famous Post Office barrel. This system was the only way of communication when whalers once were present in this archipelago. Today, in a great ceremony, we picked up postcards to be hand-delivered when we get home. We also dropped our own outbound cards into the barrel, with the hope that they will be picked up by other Galápagos adventurers in the coming weeks and hand-delivered to keep this old tradition alive.
Now we have onboard a very satisfied group of people that are living the week of their lifetime.
