Galápagos: Monday, October 17: Floreana

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Up at 5:45, 15 minutes before the optional wakeup call for the wet landing at Point Cormorant.

This was a sea turtle nesting spot. The nesting mostly happens at night, so we caught sight of a sea turtle in the surf, but none on land. The salt water lagoon was low on water, which meant no shrimp, which meant no flamingos.

dry season

I skipped the quick Zodiac ride around the islands, but went for the deep water snorkeling at Champion Islet.

When we jumped overboard, the water was cool, again, but what first struck me was the hundreds and hundreds of fish swimming maybe ten feet below us.

We swam along the rock wall to our right, with the ocean floor going deep below us to the left, and saw many fish, some starfish, and thousands of spiny sea urchins. The highlight was probably the diving and somersaulting young sea lion; Celso, our naturalist, somersaulted with it for a little while, which was fun to watch. I wish I had thought of getting video of that.

(Here, again, unfamiliarity with the camera bit me; I took some video of some fish, or thought I did. Afterwards I realized I had *started* recording when I thought I was *stopping* the recording, so my two underwater videos were of odd angles of nothing particularly interesting, as I swam around looking for more fish. Good thing it was only my underwater point-n-shoot that this was true for.)

After lunch, a nap sounded more appealing than kayaking + zodiac ride + the post office barrel, so I dozed off for the afternoon. Later I found that they had spotted penguins [!] though not terribly close and against the black lava background. Hopefully I'll be able to catch some penguins later in the week. (*me, reading this now: [!] :)

Birgit's post-dinner crittercam presentation was pretty cool. We saw clips of emperor penguins hunting, sharks hunting, seals and sea lions capturing and eating octopi, whales feeding, sea turtles looking for mates, and even a cat catching and eating rats, all from their points of view.

Tomorrow looks amazing, at Santa Cruz -- the Tortoise Rearing Center, the Charles Darwin Research Center, a sugar cane mill, a highlands forest, and some local shops during a full day out all sound wonderful.

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