Monday, April 17, 2017

Below the Waves

To Isla Santiago, Galapagos, Ecuador


Sadly, we are already half way done with our tour. It has really been a blast. Sure, it is sometime oppressively hot and occasionally a little boring listening to Pedro go into minute details about a particular plant, bird or insect, but really, we are fantastically lucky to be here. I’m also pretty sure we are on one of the nicer boats. It is well maintained, spacious for 15 passengers, and the food, rooms and service are top notch.

Alex, Barb, Paula, and Jos

Meg was also commenting today just how pristine the islands are. As you might expect, there is not a bit of trash anywhere, which is a welcomed change from many of the potentially beautiful places we visited in Asia. And, it would be really easy to get use to the cruise lifestyle. All we have to do is take a "panga" out for a couple nature walks, go snorkeling a couple times, and, in between, eat snacks or meals. Otherwise, we just relax or enjoy everyone else's company.



Here's what Dex thought about our day:
Today was my favorite day. It started out scorching hot. During the hike, we saw lots of marine iguanas crawling on top of each other and they would randomly, and without regard to where it was going, snort snot across other iguanas to clear salt from their noses. The Sally Light Foots (bright red orange and yellow crabs) stood out beautifully against the jet black lava rocks. We saw adult and baby sea lions playing in tide pools. In a rocky, crystal clear pool connected to the ocean, we saw a sea turtle. It was beautiful and just like a fairy tale.






The snorkeling was also incredible. For the second outing, it oddly started to rain, so a lot of people didn't come even though Pedro said it would be warmer. I loved it. I swam through tight spaces in the rocks and saw a black box fish with white spots and also the second phase, yellow with black spots. Dad spotted a morray eel a couple feet long with a huge hermit crab right next to it. We wanted to pick up the crab, but were a little worried about being bitten by the eel!
Panga ride with Jackie, Jon and Dex



I saw some cool fish, a bass, a small crab with really long legs and then I spied some really long antenna sticking out of a crack. I peered into the rock and saw two huge lobsters a little over a foot long with florescent orange under their legs and spots of dark green, blue, and purple. Finally, toward the end, as I was swimming back to the panga, I saw a huge Green Sea Turtle and followed it for a while before returning to the boat. It was super cool.


For the last three nights we had evening entertainment courtesy of Mother Nature. On Saturday night there were the sharks (White-Tipped Reef Sharks, I think), Monday there were the Swallow Tailed Gulls and tonight, Galapagos Sea Lions trying to catch flying fish. The Sea Lions are fast, but the flying fish are way faster.
Clearly, it was a great day for animal sightings. One of my favorite parts of the day was getting to see the big, old sea turtle Dex mentioned slowly swimming around.  A few of us slowly swam along side it for at least a couple minutes as it lazily swam up and down gulping a breath here and there. I was amazed to see it blink as it swam along, just like Crush in Finding Nemo.

Pedro and Dex

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