7-25 Day 7 in the Galapagos

6:45 am

Espanola Island (Hood)

I went to bed last night around 8:30-9:00. I put in my ear plugs and tried as hard as I could to fall asleep amid the waves I feared would throw me from my bed. Soon as dinner finished we began our journey to Espanola. This morning, we will be in Punta Suarez, and this afternoon in Gardner Bay. We will go on a nice long hike this morning with snorkeling and free time after lunch to visit the sea lion colony. I am contemplating a swim right now. Maybe after breakfast I’ll jump in before changing into clean clothes.

11:00ish am

We just got back from Puerto Suerez where we hiked around the island and were able to see a number of cool birds. We saw Blue Footed Boobies, the Albatross which is an omen of a good journey, the Masked Boobie, the Darwin Finch, a mocking bird, and of course sea lions, crabs, marine iguanas, we all saw the blow hole which was quite cool as well. The hike was around 1 mile, and took nearly 3 hours because of all the stops and the very rocky terrain. Sometimes through the blow hole, iguanas will shoot out, affectionately called “flying iguanas”.

At 1pm after lunch we will go to Gardner Bay for snorkeling until around 3:00 pm.

Books to get : ISBN # 0-300-08864-7

Birds, mammals, and reptiles of the Galapagos Islands: an Identification guide.
Andy Swash and Rob Still with illustrations by Ian Levington

3:15pm

Back on the boat, we went snorkeling at Gardner Bay, saw a Manta Ray, others saw sharks, but I didn’t, just more of the same fish. On the beach was a sea lion colony. They were cool, I managed to see 2 males fight for position on the beach. I took a bunch pf photos of this, and the winner got to bask in the sun.

Larry and I spoke for a bit about out travels, and he said Iceland was his favorite. I must see it sometime. Now with the sails up, (and the motor running because there isn’t much wind in the islands) we are heading to Isle Los Lobos where we will go ashore. Lobos means lion in Spanish. Hopefully on the way we will see some whales perhaps.

10:17 pm

In bed, and there were no whales. Tomorrow morning is a 5:45 am wake up. This afternoon I spent most of my time reading Dexter. I am almost finished. I stopped right before dinner. Dinner was prawns with rice and mashed potatoes. I also had my first Inca Cola, actually my first soda since coming to the islands, except for the sprite on Isabella. It was weird, like a vanilla lemonade. I saw the sunset from the deck tonight before dinner as well. Beautiful.