Galapagos - Isabella visit Sunday 6th - Wednesday 9th April. Part Two - Boat Trip, Sunday

Tashi Delek
Mike & Carol Kefford
Sun 6 Apr 2014 22:18

Five of us were taken in a flat bottomed boat for a potter around the harbour and walk on one of the small islands.  The water was shallow, very clear and with the white sandy bottom you could see rays as they swam past the boat.

 

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The penguins are a hoot.  Quite small but very distinctive.  They are the most fun to watch when they are scooting through the water, especially if there are seals about, but that is too difficult to photograph.

 

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There were many more sea iguanas basking on the rocks.  They have to warm up enough to head back under the cold water to feed on the lichen.  Not a very efficient food source so they have to spend a lot of time feeding.  Once they start to get cold they have to get back out of the water again and onto a sunny rock to warm up while they can still move.  The sea lions like to interrupt this process and grab their tails.  Even once the iguanas have made it to the waters edge there is usually a steep climb over very scratchy lava rock before they can even think about the basking part.

 

 

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Just round the corner there is a small beach with plenty of shade where the sea lions like to go and rest. 

 

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The difference between a sea lion and a seal is that a sea lion walks on its front flippers whereas a seal scoots along on its front.  There are fur seals in Galapagos and we saw a couple, but sea lions are everywhere.

 

Round the next corner was a lagoon where the turtles come to rest….

 

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and next to that a channel in the lava where the white tipped sharks go to rest.  The path ran alongside this channel so we had great, close up views of the sharks – and their very white tips.

 

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We were told that the sea lions sometimes came in to tease the sharks.  Fun for the sea lion, annoying for the shark one would presume.  Then, right on cue, in comes a sea lion and goes straight for the white tips….

 

 

 

The visit ended with a snorkel to try and find more sharks which we eventually did.  In order not to bore you with endless shark pictures there are no more for now but standby for the diving blogs.

 

By way of contrast here are some teeny tiny fish hiding at the bottom of some floating weed….

 

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