Galapagos Tour - Day 3

Sunday, June 1
We arrived safely to Española early on Sunday morning and had breakfast in Gardener Bay. We then hit the island for some hiking where we mostly saw sea lions sprawled out on a beautiful white sand beach. We also ran into Jon and Lucy here and saw the gorgeous boat they had managed to book...the Anahi catamaran, which came complete with a jacuzzi in the back of the boat. After a bit of hiking, I hit the water for some snorkeling. I headed out to a rock about 150 metes off the beach where I got to swim with several sea lions. The sea lions were incredibly playful and would hang around for about 5 minute stretches before getting bored with my obviously poorer water skills. But, I would run into more sea lions every few minutes. On the side of the rock furthest from the beach there were incredible schools of fish. It was incredible to dive down and swim through them as the school would completely surround me.

After snorkeling we all loaded back up on the boat, ate lunch, and then headed to Punta Suarez on another part of Española. We hike for about 2 hours here and got to get within inches of crabs, colorful marine iguanas (as opposed to the all black iguanas we had been seeing previously), sea lions, the largest species of the lava lizards, nazca boobies, blue-footed boobies, mocking birds, Galapagos hawks, and the albatross. The albatross here are the only colony of the birds anywhere in the Galapagos. They were absolutely gorgeous. Its funny to see how beautifully they could fly only to watch them minutes later awkwardly trying to walk on land. The blue-footed boobies and albatross were in their mating and nesting period, so we got to see the different "dances" the birds would do in order to attract a mate. The blue-footed boobies are absolutely ridiculous to watch as they perform their "dance". We also got to see a fairly large blow hole that would spray water several meters in the air when large waves hit the rocks.

After eating dinner back on the boat, we started toward Isla Floreana. It was another long ride and the water once again did not permit for a night of smooth sailing. I tried sitting on the top deck for a while, but was being thrown around so much that I couldn't last long. We also found out that this would be our last night on the boat. The boat was going into to dry dock for repairs, a paint job, and a cockroach cleaning...I guess we were on the last boat trip on this particular vessel before the high season starts here, so we were lucky enough to have the boat in its worse possible condition.