Today’s trip was to the islands of Fernandina and Isabela. The morning walk was 2 1/2 hours on lava to see the large flightless cormorants and potentially penguins. We choose to stay back because we were going to see the same things in the afternoon, but without the big hot walk with no shade. On our relaxing morning on the boat, we saw plenty of sea turtles, some sea lions and plenty of birds. Before lunch we had a discussion / lesson on oceanography, which was interesting.
After lunch, the boat headed over to Isabela to snorkel and then take a ride on the pangas to see different birds on the sea cliffs. The snorkeling was cold and I got a little nervous about going into the cave so I skipped it, but later found out that others saw stingrays as they were coming out so I was a little bummed I didn’t go in the cave. When I first jumped into the water though, I did see penguins so that was cool! Troy and I headed over to a different part of the snorkeling area and saw sea turtles with fish eating the algae off of them which was also pretty cool. The panga ride covered the same area we snorkeled and this time we saw more sea lions and a fur seal. We also got to see the nesting site of the flightless cormorant and more penguins swimming. Back on the boat and before dinner we watched the sunset and toasted our first crossing of the equator (we have 4 crossings in total).
Back to Galapagos – 2011