We awoke this morning as our Captain sailed us into a small bay on the island of Floreana, an island of green rolling hills and a very rich history. The bay we anchored in is called Post Office Bay, in honor of the post barrel that is still found here to this date, over two hundred years after first being set up by whalers. This barrel helped serve whalers away from home for many years, as they would leave mail here at various stages throughout their ordeal, which homeward-bound ships would pick up and deliver. After picking up mail to be hand-delivered on reaching home, and dropping off mail of our own, we re-boarded our faithful Zodiacs to cruise the neighboring "Loberia", or sea lion colony. These small islets are home to large colonies of the California sea lion, recently re-classified as an endemic species, the Galapagos sea lion. Amongst other highlights seen during our ride were the odd penguin, many shore and sea birds, as well as the Pacific green sea turtle (Chelonia Mydas Agassisi). The nesting season of these magnificent animals is supposed to be over by now, yet a couple of groups even saw one dragging itself up the beach, supposedly to nest!
After a great breakfast, the excitement continued as a whale was briefly spotted and tentatively identified by our naturalists as a Bryde's whale. We then anchored once more at a charming little islet called Champion for some snorkeling and glass-bottom boat activities. The great highlight of this area are the numerous gangs of playful young sea lions that come to check out any odd-looking intruder into their play-area. Today this included the glass-bottom boat, and they were obviously just as amused as we were to be peeking into another world through this transparent interface! We were supposedly trying to admire and identify different reef fish species, but our young friend kept blowing bubbles at us, and rubbing his graceful body against the glass, so we soon had to forget that idea!
