This was the last full day of our Galapagos expedition. We awoke as the ship entered the inside of a sunken caldera. Birds were flying all around the ship. Genovesa Island is a bird paradise; here our guests enjoyed one the most touching moments of the week, an intimate encounter with sea birds. Along the trails, either at Darwin Bay or at Prince Phillip’s Steps, we were walking by male frigatebirds with their gular sacks inflated, and a sense of desperation in their eyes. It is not easy to get a female, and the bigger the gular sack the more chances they have to get one. Competition is fierce as the mating season goes on and many of the females pair off. Soon we had made our way into the nesting grounds of the red-footed boobies. These are such beautiful birds with an incredible contrast of colors—their soft brown feathers, their blue beaks, the pink mask around their beak and, of course, their webbed red feet. Unlike the other varieties of booby, the red-footed boobies mostly nest in trees or bushes instead of on the ground, and we could see them perched all throughout the palo santo trees, oiling their feathers. There is much more to see here, Darwin finches, Galapagos mockingbirds, Nazca boobies, petrels and the short-eared owl.