Floreana Island
This morning, Floreana Island reminded us that we are just entering the rainy season here in Galapagos, because we saw a lot of Pacific Green Sea Turtles mating everywhere at this location. Galapagos animals behave very differently during the dry cool season than during the warm wet season. In a few weeks the whole Archipelago is going to be bathed by warm water from the Panama Oceanic flow, and the whole ecology of Galapagos is going to change as well. This means that in a few more weeks every single beach in Galapagos is going to be visited at night by female turtles laying their eggs. This is another good reason to protect the fauna and flora of our planet, because they are the best indicators of small changes on our planet.
We continued with our morning activities at a small island known as: Champion. This place is a satellite island offshore of the main island of Floreana. This is one of the two places where we can see endemic Floreana mockingbirds still in the wild. We are restoring the whole island hoping someday we will have a chance to see these mockingbirds back in their original home, like their ancestors were before the human impact. This is a very ambitious project that the Galapagos National Park is carrying out, with the help of our dear visitors.
We even had a chance to go snorkeling at this location, because Champion is one of the best places to swim with pup sea lions, big aggregations of fish, sea stars and small coral reefs still present in Galapagos.
Right after this amazing morning experience at Punta Cormorant we sailed for an hour to Post Office Bay, where we continued our adventure. This time we boarded our kayaks to explore a small group of little islets covered with Galapagos sea lions and an Opuntia cacti forest, along with seabirds and migratory shore birds as well.
Before sunset we headed back to the National Geographic Islander by Zodiac or kayak, to enjoy seeing the sun disappear in the Pacific Ocean.
