The Kiwi Kronicles: Galapagos Part IV (Days 7 and 8)

The Islands of Española, San Cristobal, and North Seymour

Day Seven: We started our last full day in the Galapagos on the island of Española (aka Hood, or as we´ve taken to calling it, "Booby Island"). We´ve seen the Boobies all over the islands diving recklessly for fish, but when they need some time off to rest on dry land, this is where they go.

In addition to all their other great qualities (cool name, cool feet, crazy diving), they are also great dancers. Actually, the males do a pretty clumsy foot stomping routine, but the ladies seem to like it. When the dancing fails to get them any attention, they also try whistling and showing off their wings. We saw one unfortunate bachelor in the middle of our path try this with every passing female. Sadly, he kept striking out. We think he needed a new pickup line. By the way, we´ve learned an inordinate amount about animal penises and mating habits. We started to think that Alex is some sort of pervert. Anyway, we had a lot of chances to see the Booby´s characteristic blue feet up close.

After some more hiking, the island climbed pretty high until eventually falling off into some pretty impressive sea cliffs. The cliffs we home to all sorts of sea birds. Here, we were able to catch a glimpse of some albatrosses, first some babies, then some full grown adults. When one of them took flight, it was easy to believe that these are the largest birds on the islands. Next up were the Masked or Nazca Boobies. They don´t have quite the unique looks or personality that their blue footed cousins do, but they still put on a pretty good show for us.

In the afternoon, we visited San Cristobal for another visit with the Giant Tortoises. Here, more than ever, we missed our old friends from out original Cormorant tour group. The replacement Cormorants were made up largely of an uppity British walking club that call themselves "The Ramblers." One woman works as a tour guide at home and wasn´t able to separate herself from that role. She thought she knew everything. It was always particularly gratifying when she would get one of Alex´s questions wrong, then one of us would know the answer. There was another guy in the group that only believed in Creationism and not Evolution. At one point, Alex was explaining how Marine Iguanas evolved from land iguanas over the last 12 million years and he was just standing there, shaking his head in disagreement. Really, why are you here? Anyway, after seeing so many Tortoises on Santa Cruz, there really wasn´t anything new here. We were pretty lucky that in 14 + excursions, this was the only one that was even slightly disappointing.

Day Eight: Our final excursion was to the island of North Seymour where we saw the last major attraction that we hadn´t seen yet, the Magnificent Frigate. Once again, these birds have enough personality to appeal to event the most hardened anti-birdites (Jen and Sue).

The frigates are the pirates of these islands. They go around stealing food from the other inhabitants. We caught one display of an ornry frigate attacking a blue footed booby to steal his most recent catch.

Thankfully, it was mating season, so the frigate´s signature red pouch was on display all over the island. These guys have to work hard for their ladies´attention. It takes them up to 20 minutes to inflate their jugular sac and since the ladies prefer the men with the largest, most colorful display, they guys go all out. Some of them are so blown up you can actually see how tight and stretched their skin is. It looks so painful, like balloons about to pop. At least the frigates had better luck than the boobies we saw. This guy was able to successfully coax a female into his tree. We thought they made a nice couple.

On our final trek back to the boat, we saw a lot of our familiar friends, boobies, iguanas, and sea lions. It was almost like they all came out to say good bye. It was the perfect end to a perfect trip. We all agree that this ranks at or near the top of the best places we´ve ever seen.