A Bulldog in the Show Me State: Day Seven, Floreana Island

Day seven was spent on Floreana Island, which is one of the few islands that have had inhabitants in their history. This is one of the four islands that Darwin did actually visit.

The one outing that we skipped on the entire cruise turned out to be the most interesting, I think. It was to Post Office Bay, and the only reason we skipped it was it was another 6AM wake up call! Post Office Bay consists of a large barrel for mail swaps that has been around since at least 1793. You are supposed to look for letters addressed back to your home town, and take them with you to hand deliver. This sounded like such fun, especially the part where you can leave your own postcards for future visitors. Most of the people on the cruise were able to find a couple of letters that they wanted to take responsibility for, which sounded like a very cool idea.

During lunch we sailed to Champion, which is a small islet off the coast of Floreana. We were not allowed to make a landing there, but were able to cruise around the area in the Zodiacs. This area is famous for the Charles mockingbird, which is no longer in existence on the main island of Floreana. It took us awhile, but we finally found one! He is well camouflaged in the lava rock, but here he is!

Along the Zodiac cruise we found lots of other sea birds and had some good photographic opportunities.

A Nazca booby. They are named after the Nazca plate, which is the tectonic plate from which the Galapagos originate.

Swallowtail gull...

Young swallowtail gull...

Noddy tern...

A tropic bird in flight...

And here he is getting a talking to by his mate! Boy, was she squawking!

And of course, our daily serving of sea lion antics! I loved these guys!

After our Zodiac ride, we were off to spend time snorkeling. There was some pretty good snorkeling here, but some of water currents were pretty swift, and very cold! This was the first day that I had an "encounter" with a sea lion...he came right up to me, swimming around, circling, blowing bubbles at me, and definitely seeking entertainment! I did my best to keep him entertained until I remembered that my lungs did not have the capacity that his did, and my snorkel was full of water, and I was way down deep! I didn't have the underwater camera at the time, but Mark got some great sea lion antics a day or two later, which will be posted at end of this cruise diary. It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip for me!

Once we headed back to the boat for lunch, we did go onto the top deck for some picture taking. Here are Jane Barker, and Babette Gwynn, Mark's former coworkers from Bar Harbor, ME. Babette is the one who came up with the idea of this trip, so I owe her an eternal gift of gratitude! She was lucky enough to have gone to the Galapagos as a teenager, and wanted to return.

And me with Jane and Babette.

This rock formation is called the Devil's Crown. There were these bizarre uprisings of lava in areas all around the Galapagos, reminding us of how these islands were originally formed. The islands are in a constant state of renewal, the westward islands being the youngest, with the eastern edge of islands being older.

Our afternoon outing was a hike on Punta Cormorant. Here was more lava lined trails, with more brackish areas. We found a beautiful sand beach, with water turtles and sea lions swimming all around. Here was our "wet" disembarkment, where you have to get out of the Zodiac into the water before getting to the shore.

A beautiful set of footprints in the sand...I don't know what animal made them, however.

Beach side photo! I assigned Babette the task of taking our "Christmas card" photo on the trip, and she did such a great job, I had to pick two!

And of course, another Sally Lightfoot crab.

The lagoon that the trail edged was the feeding spot of several flamingos. While this picture was very far off, I love the artistic (totally accidental) nature of this photo!