We woke up in Tagus Cove on Isabela Island. Breakfast at 7 was interrupted by some visitors as two sea lions had made their way onto a platform on the back of the boat and were basking in the sun.
When Marvin went back to take pictures, he dropped his phone, and in attempting to catch it, accidentally flung it into the water. There was a lot of discussion on the search and rescue plan, and of course involved commentary by all 8 passengers and the majority of the 9 crew members. Was a rescue feasible? Was the water too deep? Was the bottom too “ashy” thus covering the Phone? Could anyone free dive to 30’ (the estimated depth)? etc. Eventually, one of the crew members (our hero, Jimmy) donned scuba gear and went down. It only took him 1 minute and 5 seconds (Damon timed it) to recover the lost phone – we cheered. The phone is currently in the intensive care ward after a freshwater bath and it is now soaking in rice. We decided Marvin should get a new phone as part of an Apple media relations campaign if his phone does, in fact, keep working once it is dry. (Postscript: The phone never recovered ☹)
At 8am, we headed to shore in the Zodiacs for a hike to the top of a volcanic crater and more volcano lessons.
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| Damon following directions |
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| View of the cove and the Archipel from the top |
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| Old-ish Pirate graffiti. Not really pirates |
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| We actually woke up with another boat (a schooner) in the cove - it was the Samba! Busted. |
Although it was hot and muggy, and we were
under a full-on grasshopper attack, we made it to the top for some incredible
views of Isabela Island. A little bit of
exercise didn’t hurt, either. Back to
the ship for a quick activity change and within a few minutes, we were back on
the Zodiacs to go kayaking in the bay.
The kayaks are completely clear, giving you an opportunity to see sea
critters swim beneath you. The waves and
current were just strong enough to keep us busy navigating, but we did manage
to see a few sea lions, a lot of the tiny Galapagos penguins, and other birds.
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| Penguin! |
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| Random bird feeder on the hill |
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| Damon probably planning to hit me in the head with his paddle... |
After an hour of kayaking, we are now back on the boat heading for excursion number three – snorkeling with giant diving iguanas. Should be interesting.
We hopped in the Zodiacs in our wetsuits and with our snorkel gear and drove to some slightly offshore low lava rock formations.
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| Three turtles in this pic, fourth is just off to the right that you can't see |
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| Just a sea lion swimming under a turtle |
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| From the front |
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| From the side |
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| And Keetan (I think) - totally busted for touching a turtle :) |
We had sea lions playing with us, dive bombing and doing close call drive-bys upside-down (their favorite pose).
And then we started noticing the iguanas in the water and diving to the sea floor where they would just be munching on kelp. These massive black iguanas are just hanging out under water on rocks eating the kelp growing nearby. (Note: video clips too big for this blogger, so will post directly to Facebook)
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| This is underwater - they were all over |
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| Imagine this swimming by you... |
It was fine to hover over them and just watch, but every now and then I would pop my head above water to orient and there would be some iguana swimming on top of the water right near me. I cannot fully emphasize how they just always look pissed, so a little unnerving. But still, so cool. We also saw a flightless Cormoran dive into the water – it is strange to see (what used to be) a bird swimming underwater; (video on Facebook)
and because the water was relatively clear, the colors of the tropical fish really popped. Others in our group saw puffer fish and penguins. So far, we are all in agreement that this has been the best excursion so far and it wasn’t even lunch time.
We got back to the ship so we could cruise to our next
island – Espinoza Point on Fernandina Island – where we went on a short hike on
the lava fields Fernandina is the
youngest of all the Galapagos islands at a mere 700,000 years old. Immediately, we saw turtles swimming in a
tide pool. You cannot go anywhere
without seeing these enormous sea turtles.
They are always popping their heads up when we are in the zodiac, and we
always get close ups when snorkeling or when we see them in tide pools The coloring on their shells can be truly
amazing – the younger ones are more reddish, but the design patterns are
beautiful. Nature rocks.
A short walk further and we were greeted with some type of marine iguana nesting area. There were literally hundreds of iguanas - no matter where you looked, iguanas. A few creepy facts about iguanas in large numbers: they are little sun dials – iguanas will all face in the exact same direction (toward the sun) when they are out of water. They seem to like to lay on top of each other in a “train” fashion, they rarely move and have an “if looks could kill’ type of expression. They have this crusty white stuff on top of their heads that is some type of salt excrement that keeps them cool; and finally, they expel salt water through their noses in a strange spitting motion, so as you look upon a group of iguanas, they don’t move and all you can hear is this constant spitting noise.
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| No - not creepy at all... |
Oh, and when they are walking out of the water, they look like little prehistoric little monsters. Now, I will say that watching a baby iguana running around is kind of hilarious because they run really fast and kind of bow-legged, but I’ll take baby sea lions any day.
We continued walking on a path along the water and were rewarded with a little tide pool that had five baby sea lions playing with each other and posing for us.
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| Poser |
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| Posers |
As a group, we cannot get enough of baby sea lions. Another interesting tidbit about this island… because it is so young, most of the ground is black lava. Whenever we walked on lava, it was rare that you could put a foot down without something darting out of the way. The lava rocks are constantly alive with baby iguanas, other tiny lizards called “lava lizards”, or the billion sally lightfoot crabs that are always running around. The baby crabs are black and completely blend in with the lava, so you don’t see them until you are about to step on them when they start moving. In contrast, the red crabs are so incredibly vibrant and colorful, and they are everywhere. We had crammed a LOT into the day, and so we headed back to the ship for siesta time.
Whenever we come back to the ship, the amazing staff is
waiting for us with some type of tropical fruit drink and a snack. Today’s tropical fruit drink was coconut milk
which we immediately thought would go much better with the rum we had bought on
shore. We went to the upper deck for a
sundowner. At 3:30pm. We ended up just hanging out on the upper
deck with Elsie & Marvin. Several
drinks in, our fearless leader/naturalist, Victor, told us to run to the front
of the boat because the captain had spotted some dolphins.
“Some dolphins” turned out to be a huge pod of possibly 100 or more “common” dolphins that were stretched out in a long line just leaping into the air, spinning, sometimes jumping 2, 3 or 4 at a time. They split into groups as we went through and wherever you looked there were jumping dolphins – truly a unique experience.
Shortly thereafter, we got the call to head to the bridge – so the 8 of us, plus Victor, plus the captain all crammed in the bridge so we could watch the gps thing cross the equator and register 0’ 0’ 0’. One family tradition that my sister and I have is to yell “half and half” whenever we are crossing a state line. I made everyone in the bridge count down from 10 degrees like it was New Year’s Eve and then yell “half and half” as we crossed.
Our awesome captain then put the ship in reverse so we could do it again.
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| El Capitan - Segundo |
According to Damon, he did that only because I yelled (jokingly) after we crossed the line that I missed it, so the captain backed up to be sure I caught it. It is the small things in life that make it interesting… crossing the equator 3 times in less than five minutes.
We watched yet another gorgeous sunset
and then went down for our briefing and dinner and had a small celebration for one of the passengers (Serena), who had virtually graduated from med school in the afternoon and the chef made her a celebratory cake.
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| The original 8 - Elsie, Pam, Matt, Keetan, Serena, Damon, Victor (in background), me & Marvin |
For the most part, we are all pretty wiped after dinner, so following light chit-chat, we all headed back to our cabins for the 9-hour cruise to our next location – Santiago Island. The ride was over open water and was a little bumpy, but it seems we all have our sea legs now, so other than bouncing a bit up and down in bed, it was fine.
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| Just because. Sea Lion awesomeness. |
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