Floreana and Isabela Islands
We began our day with a pre-breakfast excursion to visit “La Loberia” (sea lion’s place) and there were a lot of babies Galápagos sea lions playing around the tidal pools where patrolling males showed control over their territories. This was also a blue-footed booby paradise and we had a couple of them really close side by side with marine iguanas and sally light foot crabs.
Post office bay followed next on our visit and we landed in a long soft sandy beach were in the early 1920’s a group of Norwegians tried to settle but the harsh conditions the lack of enough fresh water, and little communication with the outside world made them abandon the place just a couple of years later.
This place is famous for a barrel left here some time around the late 1700’s and was very useful for these old whaling ships that spent so much time out at sea and use to pick up their mail and letter left there by the previous ship. The tradition of hand delivering the mail found in this barrel started first there and continued for more than two hundred years, so we as these ancient mariners picked up some post cards and letters and left their own ones there.
For our expedition this afternoon we moved to the southwestern side of Isabela and we reached Puerto Villamil where we had all the different options: long, medium, and short walk. All of these options let us see the program for repatriation of Galápagos giant tortoises in the wild, so we visited their babies in pens and corrals.
We had a great opportunity to observe one of the many subspecies of tortoises of southern Isabela like this one that presents a “flat shape” carapace and these males and females were rescue from a lava flow in 1998 during that last volcanic eruption in Galápagos in southern Isabela, as you can observe here their shape is very similar to a “tortilla.”
One of the most amazing things we could observe was right in the middle of the town where we find a brackish water lagoon and there was a lonely flamingo and suddenly three more came to spend the rest of the evening and night in there.
We had a great time on these two islands and learn a lot about their human history and wild life, tomorrow there will be more surprises.
We began our day with a pre-breakfast excursion to visit “La Loberia” (sea lion’s place) and there were a lot of babies Galápagos sea lions playing around the tidal pools where patrolling males showed control over their territories. This was also a blue-footed booby paradise and we had a couple of them really close side by side with marine iguanas and sally light foot crabs.
Post office bay followed next on our visit and we landed in a long soft sandy beach were in the early 1920’s a group of Norwegians tried to settle but the harsh conditions the lack of enough fresh water, and little communication with the outside world made them abandon the place just a couple of years later.
This place is famous for a barrel left here some time around the late 1700’s and was very useful for these old whaling ships that spent so much time out at sea and use to pick up their mail and letter left there by the previous ship. The tradition of hand delivering the mail found in this barrel started first there and continued for more than two hundred years, so we as these ancient mariners picked up some post cards and letters and left their own ones there.
For our expedition this afternoon we moved to the southwestern side of Isabela and we reached Puerto Villamil where we had all the different options: long, medium, and short walk. All of these options let us see the program for repatriation of Galápagos giant tortoises in the wild, so we visited their babies in pens and corrals.
We had a great opportunity to observe one of the many subspecies of tortoises of southern Isabela like this one that presents a “flat shape” carapace and these males and females were rescue from a lava flow in 1998 during that last volcanic eruption in Galápagos in southern Isabela, as you can observe here their shape is very similar to a “tortilla.”
One of the most amazing things we could observe was right in the middle of the town where we find a brackish water lagoon and there was a lonely flamingo and suddenly three more came to spend the rest of the evening and night in there.
We had a great time on these two islands and learn a lot about their human history and wild life, tomorrow there will be more surprises.
