Our 8 day cruise is actually set up as a 5 day plus a 4 day itinerary where we stop (again) in Santa Cruz later today, refuel, and pick up a few additional passengers who are only doing the 4 day cruise - our day 5 is their day 1, so weirdly, the math actually works. Before we pick them up, however, we have some activities to get to! With the sun not even fully up yet, we took the zodiacs to shore and did a short hike at Las Bachas beach on and were able to watch the sun finish rising. Once again, our awesome "Original 8" was raring to go for our first activity at 6am when Victor tells us there is something cool to see. The plan on this small beach was to visit two lagoons to continue our hunt for the elusive flamingos.
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| Team dedication |
We've noticed that on our daily itineraries, Victor has now started adding shoe requirements. Today's shoe requirements include shoes as "very optional". Let's see how this plays out.
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| Shoes are "very optional" |
While walking to one of the lagoons, we were walking on the water’s edge where we spotted two baby black tipped reef sharks in the very shallow water. They were tiny – maybe 1-2’ long. It should go without saying that as soon as someone yelled baby shark, we all started singing the baby shark song. Try getting that out of your head now.
I'm starting to think that Victor's idea of very optional shoes is different than mine as we have been walking on some rough terrain to get to the lagoons. Very optional? I think not. The first lagoon was empty, but we had success at the second one and were rewarded with two flamingos.
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| Beautiful Lagoon, no flamingos, 2 iguanas. Not a fair trade |
It seems there may be more flamingos roaming around the area, but they didn’t show for us. In true Galapagos tradition, the flamingos have evolved to the point where they are able to survive on water from the lagoon, which is about 40% salinity. Everything on Galapagos has some unique quirk or characteristic that is part of the evolutionary development of life on the islands.
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| Flamingo 1 |
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| Flamingo 1 doing something cool |
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| Flamingo 2 - another beautiful lagoon |
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| Original 8! |
We headed back to the boat for breakfast, a short cruise to our refueling stop on Baltra Island, and, to wait for our new shipmates.
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| Galapagos Gas Station |
Victor had to ditch us for the day to take the 90 minute drive into town and get his first vaccine shot. We cut him some slack because, you know, Covid, and we were like a bunch of kids without full adult supervision. We did have a friend of Victors (Fabian) who showed up to corral us for the day. While our ship was refueling, we were told we had to be off the ship or remain on the top deck to stay out of everyone's way. The rest of our group opted to go to a beach on the island; whereas Damon and I decided to stay put and have the run of the upper deck where we could goof off.
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| I AM THE CAPTAIN NOW! |
The beach was pretty close by and we could see the group try to get settled, but within a few minutes, they were back on the Zodiacs coming back to the ship.
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| Back to the ship... |
We found out that, unfortunately, the beach is part of a military base, and they weren't allowed to be there, so we all hung out on the top deck waiting for our new passengers and plotting ways for our Original 8 could all stick together. We've known each other barely 5 days, yet all morning, we were lamenting the fact that new people were coming aboard – we’ve become a tight little group and we all get along really well - plus, we have double the amount of space we should be allotted and we got used to it.
The first three new people boarded around 11:30am. Two older ladies and one single female passenger. The two ladies were very nice and chatty, but they it was easy to see that they would not be able to maintain the same level of activity as the rest of our group. Apparently they were supposed to be on the full 8 days with us but they had messed up their PCR tests and had to wait until part 2 of the trip. The other lady was weirdly sullen and had an air of hostility about her that was very strange, and she did not seem to want to interact with any of us. Shortly thereafter, the other three boarded – they were a group together – a couple - Italian guy and Polish girl (she lives in Chicago) and a Swedish guy who they were friends with. They were a tight group and didn't really try to interact much with us. I probably sound like a jerk, but it was so much better before they all boarded!
After we picked up the new
passengers, we had a few hours of free time and then an unplanned snorkel trip,
which we all jumped on. We took the
Zodiacs to North Seymour Island and our original group managed to stay together
since we were suited up and ready to go on time. A note about “suiting up” in case I haven't mentioned it before... we are all wearing full wetsuits to snorkel
– partially for buoyancy and partially to keep us warm. The suiting up process consists of a lot of
grunting and groaning from the group as we try to stuff ourselves into often
wet and sometimes smelly wetsuits while wearing our often wet swim suits. Always worth it, but it
does suck putting them on.
The place where we snorkeled was incredibly clear blue water
with fantastic visibility and sun, which made the fish colors pop even more
than usual. The current was strong, so
it was more of a drift snorkel. Two new
sightings for me included a colorful trumpet fish – long and skinny. We also saw a white tipped reef shark resting
on the floor. We always count on
Elsie to free dive down with her GoPro and get the good footage. I’m perfecting comfortable viewing from up
top.
Clip of adult sized reef shark
Snorkeling with this group can be interesting as we have a
few people (including Damon) who like diving down to get a better look at
things. It is not uncommon for Damon to
hurl himself under water and ferociously kick to counteract the added buoyancy
from his wetsuit. Since I’m usually
close to him, what that means is that more than once, I’ve taken flippers to
the face if he doesn’t realize I’m there.
The other culprit is our resident 11-year old, Keetan, who is also
generally a ferocious kicker. During one
briefing, Victor told us that we had a better chance of seeing sharks if we
were quiet, and everyone looked at Keetan.
He is a great spotter of cool wildlife and likes to be in the middle of
everything, but that boy can kick up a storm! Nothing unusual to note from this particular snorkel session, but we try to take advantage of every opportunity because you just never know what you will see! Of course in this case, I seem to recall a lot of flipper in the face sightings.
After a short snorkel, we took the zodiacs back to the ship and headed to Mosquera Islet – a small sandy island that is home to a colony of sea lions with a hella lotta babies. Get ready for pictures galore. This place was "sea puppy" (a term I just learned) central. When we use the Zodiacs, our two mates (Carlos & Jimmy) are typically the drivers, and sometimes we will have another crew member to help with something. The all usually wear masks or a buff to cover their faces. On this Zodiac ride, the waves were big, and we all kept getting hit with water coming over the side of the Zodiac. One of the engineers (Victor) who was on our Zodiac had been taking the brunt of the waves up front eventually moved to the back of the Zodiac next to me. Most of the crew speaks little/no English, so it was funny when he said in perfect English “my ass is full of water”. Note my wet shorts in all islet pictures that confirms that, in fact, my ass was also full of water.
The islet was a small strip
of sand that had a little hill in the middle, once we crossed the sandy hill,
we were rewarded with a bunch of tide pools and a bunch of baby sea lions. We
pretty much spent our entire hour watching them play and sitting still on rocks
waiting for the curious babies to waddle on over. The babies in the water were having a fine
time – leaping and jumping and biting each other. The funniest maneuver that I saw was when two
were playing and one would leap out and do a wrestle mania pile driver move as
it flopped back into the water on top of its playmate - they did this over and over and over again. I could have watched for hours. Now, for the extremely vetted favorite sea lion pictures and videos, lovingly culled from hundreds...
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| It was very easy to get up close & personal |
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| It's a family affair |
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| Sea Puppy |
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| Archipel, sunset, sea lion. Sigh. |
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| Lovey puppies |
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| More lovey puppies |
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| And more lovey puppies |
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| They are always hugging or touching |
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| More lovey puppies |
One sea lion habit that cracks me up is the "splat" - they run and then they just splat to "all fours". Most videos have a loud wind noise - recommend, turning down volume.
The run and splat - 25 seconds
Another run and splat - 3 seconds
Longer video of the whole area - 1:50
Curious sea puppies - 21 seconds
Me getting chased - 12 seconds
Me and sea lion bonding on a rock (Note: I keep looking right because a bunch of other sea lions are working their way toward me...) - 30 seconds
Even baby sea lions get annoyed with their parents - 27 seconds
We took the ship back to Santa Cruz to wait for Victor to rejoin and assumed our pre-dinner post - Elizabeth, Marvin, Damon & me enjoying a drink on the top deck before dinner. The chef has taken to creating food creations on the buffet.
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| Eggplant penguins |
We had learned that some folks had been visiting the upper deck after
dinner to spot wildlife and star gaze, so I went up to join them. It was pitch black outside but there were
lights aimed at the water – apparently, I had just missed a giant shark swim by
next to our ship. Keetan was on a hunt
to see it again and ran from one side of the ship to the other until he saw it on
the other side. Of course, I missed it
both times. The stargazing, however, was
spectacular. It was so bright that we
could easily make out the milky way, and Victor used a laser pointer to
highlight constellations. Eventually we
powered up for a 7-hour cruise to our next island – Genovesa. The 7-hour cruise was over open water and it
had been very windy. To say that the
swells were large would be an understatement.
We were rocking and rolling pretty much all night and while I was never
nauseous of felt sick, the huge drops as we went over swells was a bit
disconcerting.
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| Another gorgeous sunset |
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