We had a very early morning activity at Punta Cormorant to observe and enjoy two beaches on our visit. Our landing beach had a lot of olivine crystals on it and as a result it is known as a green sandy beach and its formation is made up of volcanic material. The second one was a beautiful white sandy beach, which is also a perfect nesting ground for the pacific green sea turtle.
We hiked over cinder volcanic material with no boulders, making it easy for all of our guests. During our hike along the two beaches, we passed by a brackish lagoon with a few flamingos who are filter feeders, and their main food is microscopic crustaceans, this is the reason they are pink: they get the pigmentation by feeding on them.
It was a very relaxing pre-breakfast activity with playful baby Galapagos sea lions, American oyster catchers, blue and striated herons and blue footed boobies plunge diving for small fish.
Later, we offered a different activity for everyone around a very small volcano known as Champion just off the coast of the main Island Floreana.
We went around this small geological formation searching for one of the rarest mockingbirds on our planet: The Floreana mockingbird. This species of bird is extinct on the big Island, due to the impact caused by introduced animals, but we are working very hard with the help of the Charles Darwin Station and the Galapagos National Park to restore it. This is a big, ambitious project that may last for a decade or more but, we have a hope that someday all of Galapagos will be restored and hopefully we can get an harmonious ecosystem in this oceanic archipelago.
We went out one more time to the same location, this time we went for water activities. Because this place is well known for the amount of fish of different kinds, once in the water we were swimming with thousands of fish, turtles, sea lions along a beautiful coral reef with lots of invertebrates as well.
For the afternoon we had a quick visit to a famous visitor site that was set up by whalers in the early eighteen hundreds. These people placed a wine barrel here to drop correspondence in and serve as a link of communication with their families in Europe.
Right after this short visit we went out by Zodiac and kayak to explore some little secret channels with sea lions, rays, turtles, pelicans, boobies and beautiful forests of endemic giant prickly pear cactus.
It was a beautiful day and everyone started heading back by Zodiac and by kayak to the National Geographic Islander.
