Floreana Island

Up early again this morning, because we were sent to bed so early last night we were awake before the 5:30 knock on the door and were hoping to catch the sun rise on deck. No sunrise again this morning, it is overcast again so landing is postponed again by 15 minutes, I am not sure what this 15 minute difference is supposed to make, but he seems to like doing this.

Today we land for the first time in Floreana Island. Again we are greeted by sea lions, if anyone is interested in about 1,000 pictures of sea lions I think by now Andre can accommodate you, and this trip is only ½ over!!.

This is our first sighting of the pink flamingos, they are quite far away from the viewing spot, but very pink. We are also able to spot 4 babies.

We also spotted some blue footed boobies doing their mating ritual.

We then walked a little way along a path to the other side of the island to a beautiful beach. Again it is quite wavy here and we could see turtles in the waves as the waves were building. This beach is full of empty nests from the turtles, you could see lots of tracks going down to the water.

We spent quite a while on this beach, and got another geology lesson on the formation of the islands, I sure do hope there is not a test at the end of this cruise because I am quite sure I will not pass. The only question I definitely know the answer to now is where is the volcano on Galapagos island, the answer is the Galapagos islands are a volcano.

Blue footed boobies mating ritual

Turtle tracks from nest

Turtle landing on beach

On the way back to the boat we ended up being a look closer to the flamingos.

Back to the boat and a quick turn around for first snorkel trip today. The first trip was very gentle, little current and lots of fish. We saw a couple of turtles and some beautiful fish. When you looked up into the banks we were following you could also see sea lions resting in the sun.

Back onto the zodiacs and a short ride over to Devils Crown for another snorkel session. This was amazing, I think the best we have ever seen in such distance. This was lots of fun too, it is a big outcropping that is very deep, but an opening through the middle that gets quite shallow.

The zodiacs drop you off at one end, you float through the middle and then they pick you up and you go around one outside, pick up again, then back around the other side. The current is quite strong here but you basically just float away and look at the beautiful fish as you go by.

At the opening for the first drop there were literally thousands of fish, I couldn’t believe it when I put my face in the water. Juan also told us to look for hammerheads as this would be a spot that we may see them, Andre I think was a little disappointed there were none there, me not so much.

I did see my first shark, but it was a small white tip shark, not much bigger than some of the fish we have seen. We spent more than 2 hours in the water snorkelling today, much longer than was scheduled but everyone had a fantastic time.

Devil's Crown.  Amazing snorkeling

We had to apologize to chef when we got back to the ship as we were late for lunch, we were forgiven.

This afternoon was our first real break, we were taken to a beach and told we had 2 hours to do spend how we liked. Some people just stayed on board and rested, we went to the beach and went for a walk and a couple of swims.

We also had our first encounter with a penguin, this was great. We were just swimming around and the penguin came right up to us to check us out. The same experience happened later in the afternoon with a young sea lion, they are so curious and it came right up to check us out. We were a little disappointed as we didn’t have any snorkel gear with us and we could see turtles in the water, and it would have been great to snorkel with the penguin and sea lion.

This place was also what was called the Post Office where whalers would drop mail and boat going home would bring it back to the sailors home towns.  We looked at the mail to see if anyone was from our area.

Swimming with a penguin!

Back to the ship and we had a couple of hours on deck to just enjoy the afternoon. We did spot a Bryte whale and were able to watch it for a little while.