Floreana and Isabela Islands
We started our journey this morning with an outstanding visit to a very ancient location in the Galápagos archipelago, Post Office Bay. We went ashore before breakfast and followed a whaling tradition that was started in the late 1700s by some British whalers. This tradition is to look through the mail in the barrel and collect the letters and postcards left to be taken by us with the aim of hand delivering this mail, just like those ancient sailors did. We left the barrel then and had a wonderful time riding along the coast of “La Loberia” (sea lion’s place) and we found blue-footed boobies, great blue herons, Galápagos marine iguanas, sea lions, and lots of magnificent frigate birds all of them waking up and getting ready to go feeding out at sea.
We returned aboard for a delicious breakfast while we started to sail towards Champion islet where snorkeling and glass bottom boating were breathtaking and hallucinating activities for all of us who love the sea life. Today Galápagos sea lions were especially friendly and came to play under the glass bottom boat and we certainly enjoyed having them as our buddies during the time we were snorkeling along the cliffs of Champion islet. The warm waters around Champion were so full of life; one could float surrounded by thousands of fishes of different colours. They come so close to you that you can almost feel them touching you.
We left this wonderful location to go to Isabela Island were we amazed with a wonderful visit where greater flamingos, black-necked common stilts, white-cheek pintail ducks and common gallinules are found feeding and breeding around the largest system of wet lands in the archipelago, here on this island. Our outing was combined with a visit to the rearing center for Galápagos giant tortoises. There we learn about the great efforts done here to restore the populations of the different varieties of giant tortoises of Isabela Island. This is the largest island and has five volcanoes each one with a different variety of tortoise that diverge from each other morphologically and genetically, so that makes them a priceless treasure to be preserved. We returned to the ship were we enjoyed our recaps and the rest of the evening.
We started our journey this morning with an outstanding visit to a very ancient location in the Galápagos archipelago, Post Office Bay. We went ashore before breakfast and followed a whaling tradition that was started in the late 1700s by some British whalers. This tradition is to look through the mail in the barrel and collect the letters and postcards left to be taken by us with the aim of hand delivering this mail, just like those ancient sailors did. We left the barrel then and had a wonderful time riding along the coast of “La Loberia” (sea lion’s place) and we found blue-footed boobies, great blue herons, Galápagos marine iguanas, sea lions, and lots of magnificent frigate birds all of them waking up and getting ready to go feeding out at sea.
We returned aboard for a delicious breakfast while we started to sail towards Champion islet where snorkeling and glass bottom boating were breathtaking and hallucinating activities for all of us who love the sea life. Today Galápagos sea lions were especially friendly and came to play under the glass bottom boat and we certainly enjoyed having them as our buddies during the time we were snorkeling along the cliffs of Champion islet. The warm waters around Champion were so full of life; one could float surrounded by thousands of fishes of different colours. They come so close to you that you can almost feel them touching you.
We left this wonderful location to go to Isabela Island were we amazed with a wonderful visit where greater flamingos, black-necked common stilts, white-cheek pintail ducks and common gallinules are found feeding and breeding around the largest system of wet lands in the archipelago, here on this island. Our outing was combined with a visit to the rearing center for Galápagos giant tortoises. There we learn about the great efforts done here to restore the populations of the different varieties of giant tortoises of Isabela Island. This is the largest island and has five volcanoes each one with a different variety of tortoise that diverge from each other morphologically and genetically, so that makes them a priceless treasure to be preserved. We returned to the ship were we enjoyed our recaps and the rest of the evening.
