The early morning breeze felt a little colder today as we began scanning the horizon and look for whales. While the light began to filter through the clouds, the clouds covering the main volcano on Fernandina Island started to turn into different colors of reds and yellows. A few frigates decided to join us and traveled along our route and a few storm petrels traveled into the sea, probably it was the beginning of the day for them also.
Whales will appear and surface, but not in the early morning. It was time to be patient and relax, enjoy the weather and the impressive sight in front of us: on the left side the northern volcanoes of Isabela Island and on the right the lava slopes and lave flows of Fernandina Island, the youngest one in the Galapagos Archipelago.
After disembarking on the small dock of Punta Espinosa, our visiting site at Fernandina, we had an encounter with not just one marine iguana, but a whole rock covered by them. Mostly motionless, they were laying on the lava rock like live statues. Every now and then an iguana sneezed, while a lava lizard moved along among them, and few iguanas had pieces of skin hanging along the sides of their body flapping in the wind. During the rest of the walk we saw several flightless cormorants, including some building a nest. It was a very funny scene as one partner arrived with a new and shiny piece of brown algae to build the nest. Its partner, and probably already its mate, was sitting on two eggs as the mate arrived, the one sitting on the nest made some sounds and the one just carrying the piece of algae just threw it by the nest. They looked at each other and the one in charge of finding nest building material just returned to the sea to look for more brown algae.
During the afternoon we snorkeled off Punta Vicente Roca in the northern part of Isabela Island. The water was a little cold but it was worth it, several Pacific green turtles were hanging around the small cove, swimming and diving to feed in the same area. Also two penguins swam by, probably this is the only place on the planet were it is possible to swim with penguins and not end up freezing at the same time.
After the snorkeling we did a Zodiac ride along the coast of Isabela, the penguins were on land this time, standing on a rock. Later we started navigating and had a small “ceremony” while we crossed the equatorial line, while we crossed for the second time as the sun was setting on the horizon. Another day awaits tomorrow, full with more adventures.
