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Date: 09 Mar 2008 13:36:04
Title: Galapagos - Floreana Island Tour
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00:44.827S  90:18.414W
 
On Tuesday (3/4) we went on our second of three day tours, this time to the island of Floreana, which is south of Santa Cruz.  Thankfully we didn't have to go through the planes, trains and automobiles exercise like we did for our first tour, and the hour we left in the morning was not nearly as barbaric.  The tour boat was smaller, but powered by two very large 200 horsepower outboard motors.  Yes!  We were all excited to finally be on a boat that could speeeeed.
 
The first stop on our tour was a circumnavigation of the very small Champion Island.  This island is one giant rounded chunk of rock pitted all over with holes just large enough to make nice homes for all kinds of incredible birds, some of which can only be found in the Galapagos.  The most famous Galapagos bird is called the blue footed boobie.  We tried to capture this bird in picture 1, but it's not the best image.  If you squint your eyes and turn your head sideways, you might be able to tell that this bird actually does have blue feet.  Not just any blue either.  It is a very nice and bright powder blue.  As Mandy, the World ARC rally event manager said to us, 'The blue footed boobie struts around with a dignified look on its face as if it doesn't completely realize that it looks utterly ridiculous with those bright blue feet.'  This is exactly true.
 
The image of the blue footed boobie is splashed across almost every Galapagos t-shirt we've seen (including the one we bought for me).  At the rally farewell party this past Friday night, the entire crew of Whitbread (an English, 72 foot ex-racing boat built long ago and carrying a very young captain with at least six or seven 20-something aged young men and one young woman as crew) showed up with large powder blue balloons fixed to their chests under their shirts in honor of the blue footed boobie (the young woman opted to honor the blue footed boobie by wearing a bright blue shirt and some very unique powder blue, webbed slippers - purchased in the Galapagos no doubt).  When the Whitbread crew made their grand entrance to the party, I realized my mistake in not bringing the camera.  Sorry.
 
After our circumnavigation of Champion Island, we moved on to another very small island called Enderby.  There, our guide, who spoke English that we could actually understand, suited up for snorkeling and led us in a snorkeling circumnavigation of the island.  This was the longest time I had ever snorkeled, and I not only survived, but enjoyed it as well.  There were many sea lions on the rocky shore and before we got in the water, our guide explained that there was one male to as many as ten or fifteen females (Don thinks these odds are excellent) and the male didn't like humans snorkeling too close to his harem. With that in mind, we slipped into the water and were on our way, following the group and our guide.  A little while after we started, we got a little behind because I was having trouble with my mask fogging.  Just as we were swimming to catch up to the group, we both noticed a big mass coming at us from the edge of our underwater vision.  Oh my God!  It's a sea lion!  It looks huge!  Is it the male?  Is he going to bark at us, attack us and batter us to death?  These are all thoughts that went through my head at the time.  I'm not sure if Don was feeling quite the same level of panic, but I know he was feeling some.  It all happened so fast that it took a minute or two to realize that the sea lion (who was probably female) only came close enough to show off its ability to twist and twirl and dive really fast, and all the while look as graceful as a ballerina.  This same sequence of events happened several times with different sea lions (minus the panic since we soon got over that).  Each time, the sea lion would approach us very fast, like a sleek, but blubbery torpedo.  Then, once they were sure they had our full, undivided attention, they dove and twirled for us and then moved on.  Unbelievable.  We can truly say that we swam with the sea lions and lived to tell about it.
 
The sea lions were one thing, but the array of  fish swimming below and past us was beyond anything we had seen before - in terms of shear number of fish as well as variety.  Every color, shape and size you can imagine in a tropical fish swam by us.   At one point, our guide dove to the bottom and picked up a giant, pinkish-red starfish and a prickly sea cucumber for us to touch and hold.  This whole snorkeling episode felt like we had stepped into a marine documentary with a bit of fairy tale thrown in for good measure.
 
After Enderby Island, we moved on to a second snorkeling site called Devil's Crown.  The name stems from the fact that the site is an old volcano crater that is now mostly submerged.  It makes for great snorkeling because the crater forms a rocky circumference with an area only a couple of meters deep inside the rocky 'crown'.   Our guide again led us around the site and we saw more of the same array of fish and sea lions.  After most of the group got back on the boat, we noticed three or four people still in the water who seemed very reluctant to leave.  When they finally did make their way back to the boat, we found out the reason for their reluctance.  They were watching as one particular sea lion twirled and danced underwater for them, and then watched as it dove to the bottom to pick up a giant starfish.  The sea lion then began to toss the starfish up through the water and catch it again in its mouth.  It did this several times, and at one point, the sea lion missed the starfish on its way down, and it settled back on the bottom.  Thinking quickly, one of the snorkelers dove down to the bottom to retrieve the starfish and then watched in amazement as the sea lion actually approached and took the starfish directly out of her hands with its mouth.  We know this to be true because one of the other snorkelers caught the whole scene on their underwater video camera.  Yup, like a marine documentary with a bit of fairy tale thrown in.
 
After all that excitement, we moved on to the island of Floreana, where we went to shore in a dinghy and met up with more sea lions sunning themselves on the concrete jetty.  One of them posed very nicely for us (picture 2).  A few steps away from the sea lions, we ran into this rather massive iguana enjoying himself on a rock (picture 3).
 
We then stopped for lunch at a local 'restaurant'.  The lunch was excellent (fish! what else?), but the term 'restaurant' is used loosely here.  It was really the front patio of someone's house.  We know this because when we went to use the bathroom, we had to walk through what seemed to be the dining/living room (although the expanse of bare concrete floor was only filled with a deep freezer and a refrigerator - there was no other furniture to be found).  The bathroom was much like you would find in an older home with one exception.  The running water was not hooked up to the toilet, but there was a convenient barrel of water with a plastic bucket floating in it.  The idea was to dump a bucket of water from the barrel into the toilet to flush it (I didn't realize this of course and had to, embarrassingly enough, receive instruction).  The rest of the house consisted of a small kitchen (too small to fit the refrigerator and deep freezer in) and two bedrooms.  The doors were closed to the bedrooms, but I could hear kids talking and cartoons blaring from a TV.  Yup, TV, even on the remote island of Floreana where only 300 people live.
 
After lunch we rode up to the highlands on an interesting truck converted to tourist wagon complete with rows of benches that looked like they had been swiped from the local catholic church (the seats were padded, you don't often find protestant churches with padded seats).  The dirt road abruptly ended and we walked from there to an area where the local variety of giant tortoises are looked after (picture 4).  The beasts are simply huge, but seemingly so gentle that they are almost cute in a reptilian kind of way.  Especially when you see them chomping on the green leafy bushes within their reach, as we did.
 
We then hiked further to see the local village's water supply (picture 5).  That's our very enjoyable guide filling plastic cups directly from the water source for all of us thirsty boaters suffering from the 90+ degree heat.  Rally boater Robert from the British sailboat Quasar V is getting a much needed rest on the right.  He's got a bad back and is actually flying home in May for back surgery.  He plans to rejoin his boat in Australia.  How's that for dedication?
 
We then hiked even further to see the area where the first settlers on Floreana lived (they basically made their homes in the crevices formed by large vertical slabs of rock).  Picture 6 shows a carving done by an early settler.  There were no people on the Galapagos islands when they were first discovered.  So, according to our guide, the early settlers were Europeans and other people from South America.
 
We returned to the dirt road and rode the church bench tourist wagon back down to the jetty where we re-boarded the boat via dinghy.  From there we made one more stop at another small nearby island known to be a home for penguins.  Sure enough, there were eight penguins waiting to greet us in their dinner jackets when we arrived (picture 7).
 
After the penguin viewing, we settled in for the speedy ride back to Santa Cruz.  About five minutes into the ride, about thirty dolphins appeared from nowhere to swim alongside us.  Our speed boat driver slowed down and changed course to accommodate the dolphins.  We thought that was extremely thoughtful (for us and for the dolphins).  After ten or twenty minutes the dolphins moved on and we again settled in for the ride back.  I haven't mentioned anything about the deck hand whose job it was to make sure all of our needs were attended to.  Let me just say that never have we felt so pampered on this trip as we did during this boat ride.  The deck hand was so cute - small and compact with a never-ending Ecuadorian smile.  He was constantly in motion, handing us fresh towels to sit on and life jackets to use as pillows (unlike our previous tour boat, we didn't have to wonder where the life jackets were), not to mention the constant supply of snacks (sugar wafer sandwich cookies and watermelon are big down here).  Heavenly, it was.
 
And so ended our second Galapagos tour.  A perfect day.
Anne

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