Thursday 27th August 2015 – Morning
The sea was not too rough during the night boat ride. We heard the anchor go down at 4.03am and then fell asleep again until 6.45am alarm clock. We went for brekky at 7am. Lingered around. 8am got into the panga.
Here was the programme for the day.
Introduction written on the board on the boat
Here was my first shot of the boat seen from the panga.
Next to it was a boat called the Aida Maria. We were the only two boats around.
The panga
Seeing them from the Punta Moreno land.
This accordion lava formation is really interesting.
We saw our first flyless cormoran, a cormoran only found in the Galapagos islands.
The funny thing is that bird still thinks they need to dry their wings even if they don`t use their wings anymore.
We started walking on the path. It cracked under our feet like if we were walking on the blue tiles type of stone, such a weird feeling. I never walked on this kind of ground before. Saw some cactus.
Another type of cactus.
Some green in the middle of the dark lava ground.
Feels like jumping from one big cow dung to another one.
Stole the idea of Patrick of photographying my feet inside one of them.
Our awesome guide giving us great explanations about this part of Isabela island.
Mangrove
In the distance, we could see 2 flamingos flying around but they were quite far.
When they fly, they really look just like sticks with wings.
Local flower
We got to a small pond. The contrast of the green with the anthracite stones was stunning.
Because the water is saline, it bleaches the vegetation all around the lake creating this strange contrast between the white and green colours.
A local plant.
Another lake
Nice stone
Beautiful colours
Sea lions
Flyless cormoran
Back on the panga, we drove nearby to see this side of Punta Moreno.
Hundreds of iguanas were agglutinated together.
Seals coming to play
Sea lions
At some point, the sea lion was coming up next to the iguanas.
Penguin!
Cormoran, their eyes are of such a fascinating colour!
Bobbies, the male was doing the bobby dance which is so funny where he moves his feet to say “hey, aren`t my feet the most pretty blue feet that you have ever seen?” He turns around on a 360 degree turn, showing his pretty feet, the head really high and proud. Just so funny to watch. I recorded it on video. Will try to add some videos at some point in the articles!
And we look at the penguin again.
And at the cormoran couple.
It was just incredible to see all those animals in the same spot, but not just standing still but even doing crazy things!!!
After that, we went back to the boat and got into our snorkling gears. This was my first snorkling as I didn’t go in the water the first day in the afternoon where we could try our equipment from the Bacha`s beach. I didn’t have my go pro so I can’t really show anything here sadly. The most funny at the beginning was to see everyone jump in the water and breathe heavily like if they had a heart attack, or scream, because the water was freezing and we only had a 2.5mm shorty wetsuit.
It was taking about 3 to 5 minutes to adjust to it and get used to it. I would say the water was about 18-19 degrees Celsius. On this first snorkle, the visibility was not that good and the waves were dragging us towards the rocks. We saw a few turtles but not really the penguins or cormorans.
After that first snorkle, we went back on the boat to have lunch.
Pom explores 