Day Three: To start our third day, we were rescued from our cafeteria exhile. There is assigned seating for our meals and the seats that we were assigned were in the corner, by ourselves, with a two table buffer between the next occupied tables. Apparently we looked dangerous and needed to be quarantined. Thankfully, Gerry and Marsha, some of our fellow "Cormorants" asked the staff to seat us with her table and we had great company for the rest of our meals.
Our first stop of the day was Santiago Island (or San Salvador, or James, they like redundant names here), where we were treated to an abundance of coastal wildlife. Again, the marine iguanas were everywhere. We almost started to get numb to them (they are about as rare as squirrels at home). One of the best displays was the changing of the guard between some Oyster Catchers. The female loudly let it be known that she had just about enough egg sitting and her shift was over. She screamed for the male to come. Eventually he came and dutifully took over the egg watch.
Walking further down the beach over some crazy rock formations and sea arches, we encountered our second species of sea lion, the curiously named Galapagos Fur Seal (we´ve been well schooled on the differences between seals and sea lions, and there are no seals in the Galapagos). Eventually, the female fur seal´s mate climbed up the rocks too and they enjoyed a nice nap together, completely oblivious to the audience.Next up was snorkeling and the beach was well-guarded by some more sea lions. The water was a little cold so Jen and Sue enjoyed the views from the beach. Chris toughed it out and was treated to a swim with plenty of fish, a couple of sea turtles, and the ubiquitos sea lions.
After lunch, we visited Rabida Island. The landscapes vary widely from island to island and we hadn´t seen anything like Rabida, with its striking red sand and abundance of cacti. We took a short hike around the island admiring all of the different species of birds in the area. The frigates soar over the island and seem to just float effortlessly over one spot. They look like the should have a kite string attached. In stark contrast are the boobies, who take kamikaze dives through the surface of the water every couple of seconds as they try to catch some dinner. Rabida was also the sight of one of the strangest things we´ve seen. After stopping for one of our tour guide´s patented moments of silence in which we all "sit and shut up", we saw a pelican fly by and make a couple of passes. Then, without warning, he dove straight down into the water. Apparently, he thought he was a booby. Our whole group oohed and aahed and eventually, he did it again. We asked our guide about it and he said that it was impossible. "Noboby´s ever seen that." This just reinforced the fact that apparently we are a bunch of nobodies. We waited in anticipation for the pelican to do it again to prove that we weren´t all hallucinating. Finally, he went for it, but instead of going down and getting a fish, he had a horrible crash landing, somersaults and all. And, Alex still thinks we all made it up.
Day Four: Today we visited the island of Santa Cruz to see the famous Galapagos Giant Tortoises. First up was the Charles Darwin Research Center. They are doing a lot of great work there to protect the tortoises and we were able to see everything from newborns, to some of the oldest creatures on the island. Some of the more notorious residents include "Super Diego", who has over 1,200 offspring (and has countless baby´s mamas) and "Lonesome George", who sadly has not been able to breed. He is the last member of his subspecies and if he fails to breed, it will be the end of that subspecies. It doesn´t look good. The center was a great intro, but after seeing so many island animals in the wild, it was weird to be in a sort of zoo.
In the afternoon, we took another excursion and visited some more tortoises in their natural habitat. These guys were a bit more shy than the ones in the center. Some would retract into their shells, others would hiss, but thankfully there was a field full of them and we were able to find a couple that liked us. It really was a great experience too be able to spend the day with the islands´namesake species!
A Tortoise munches on all the pretty flowers.
A Galapagos Hawk soars over Rabida Island.
Another tortoise cools off in the murky pond water.
1 comment:
Look, if you're going to make up stories about crazy crash-landing Pelicans you're going to go back to the table in the corner! Do you want that? No. Nobody wants that! So just keep quiet ok.
Post a Comment