4th - Galapagos

Lunch

We started early this morning at Puerto Egas so that we would get a head start in front of the other tourist that also had arrived during the night. Breakfast was therefore served at 0630 so we could be ready at 0700. Breakfast this morning was pancakes and eggs, which helped compensate for the early start. The weather wasn’t perfect, though. Low clouds, windy and high humidity. But it cleared up, though the wind didn’t ease up much.

We did a wet landing on black sand, and we had a 2-hour walk where we saw a lot of marine iguanas and sea lions. There were also a few very young sea lions, all of which we could get close to without them reacting.

Afterwards we did some shallow water snorkeling. This was at times quite hard as the current at places was fairly strong, and there were a few rocks close to the surface that we had to be careful not to hit. A few were struggling with the currents and waves at times, but luckily nobody got hurt. But we got to see several sea turtles swim around which was a beautiful sight. Somebody also saw a very playful sea lion pub, but that had only been for a short while.

Back at the boat we are now on our way to Isla Rábida located just south of Santiago. Here we will be doing another wet landing, walk and shallow water snorkeling.

Sea lion pub

A lot of marine iguanas were gathered at Puerto Egas.

Evening

We did a wet landing on a beach where there were several sea lions sunbathing. After a short walk back and forth on the beach, where we also saw a couple of blue-footed boobies and several iguanas.

Afterwards we snorkeled from the beach, unfortunately there was not much to see and the sea lions did not come out and swim. The current made it quite hard to get back to the beach, so most people gave up and jumped into the zodiacs that where keeping an eye on us.

Getting back to the boat we started moving to our new location. We only sailed for two hours so we could eat dinner without having to do it with the ship rolling. While sailing we saw for a short while a small pod of dolphins swimming in front of the boat. Not much jumping going on, but it was still very easy to follow them while they were there.

Before dinner we had a goodbye cocktail as the group that was present on the boat when we showed up are leaving tomorrow early morning. Dinner was as usual very good, and soon thereafter we continued the voyage, and we will probably reach our destination around 2300.

Tomorrow there will be no snorkeling, instead we will be spending time in Puerto Ayora at Darwin Research Station, and after lunch when the new group arrives we will go to the Giant Tortoise Reserve.

Booby!

Marine iguana

Dolphins following the boat