During the night the Anahi had sailed around the island so we awoke to a new view.
"Goooooood Morning My friends welcome to another day in Paradise. Breakfast will be in 10 minutes" came the call from Roberto. How can he sound so cheerful so early every day?
Today we went for a walk across the lava fields at Punto Marino. Roberto explained about all the different types of lava. We never knew there were so many – we thought lava was lava!
All along the way he pointed out the endemic this and endemic that. Occasionally there was an introduced species or a native species but nearly everything we saw was endemic.
We needed clarification on what he meant by endemic by now and it basically means it's not native to Galapagos but has travelled to the islands by some means or another and adapted itself to life there.
The lava flow was beautiful and growing here and there were the very pretty coloured lava cactus which we really liked.
lava cactus
We had an hour for snorkelling next where we saw sea turtles. Followed by lunch and the Anahi sailed again just for a short time for us to move further around the coast again but long enough for us to get a nap in. All this fresh air is tiring us out!.
The water is much calmer here as it is sheltered by the island so our nap was very relaxing and Peter and Annette were fine.
We all jumped in the dingies again but no landing this time. Two of our crew paddled us through the mangroves at Elizabeth Bay. It was beautiful and so peaceful until someone spotted a turtle and we all got excited.
The last time we had paddled through mangroves in a small boat was when we were in the Sunderbans of north east India. It was similar in some ways but the wildlife here was very different. Sea turtles and sea lions were sheltering here but this time the sea lions were in the trees.
sea lions in the trees!
How on earth did they get up there?
We left the mangroves and the crew used the engines on the dingies to take us over to some rocky islands which were home to penguins. This was the first time we had seen any penguins here so we enjoyed that.
The rocks were also home to more sea lions, blue footed boobies, cormorants, pelicans and gulls. You could smell it a mile away!
Bryan has made a short video of our day if you want to see it here
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Isabela, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador
Sunday, December 13, 2015
