Galápagos: Thursday, October 20: Bartolomé & Sombrero Chino

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We woke early, again, to hike to the top of Bartolomé Islet, to see and photograph the iconic Galápagos view.

The snorkeling off the beach of Bartolomé might have been the best of the entire trip. A couple penguins jumped in the water with us, and I saw 3 different white tip reef sharks, one almost close enough to touch.

fish

shark

I'm still very much a bad underwater photographer, but had fun doing it. Some of the others are getting some great shots underwater. I think I'd throw all mine out if they came out like that on land.

After lunch, on the way to Sombrero Chino, we passed by an island with an old crater, and in passing caught a maybe 30 second glimpse of flamingos in the lagoon inside that crater. I managed to get a few not-too-bad-for-being-very-distant shots. It's kind of awesome how they were able to tell us practically to the minute when that view would appear.

I missed the 2nd round of snorkeling, but caught the zodiac ride near sunset, where we saw sea lions playing near the shore. We circled several times, waiting for penguins, but nothing. As it grew dark and we prepared to turn around, a penguin swam up to the lava rocks; we converged; it climbed up and we all were taking a ton of pictures. Then, as we watched, a bunch more penguins swam up and congregated on the rocks. Very, very special.

I cranked the ISO on these last two, as it got dark, so they look brighter than the earlier ones... Can you tell I don't do a lot of editing?

Dinner was an outdoor barbeque where Cindy, our expedition leader, told us we needed to visit South Georgia... Falklands, South Georgia, and the Antarctic peninsula is a full 3 weeks. "Galapagos on steroids" is her description of it.

A bunch more people were out looking for activity in the water; word spreads fast. Wasn't quite the same; headed inside and made the mistake of checking some work email.

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