Floreana (Charles) - Galapagos Islands Day 4

Punta Cormorant

Every island we visited was so different! Today we were up early with a 5:30 AM wake-up call and disembarked from the Sagitta at dawn about 6 AM - without breakfast! The objective was to get to a beach where we might arrive early enough to see the Pacific Sea Turtles, that come to the beach at night to lay their eggs, returning to the water.

We landed at Punta Cormorant on Floreana. It was a wet landing on an olivine or "green" beach. There are other olivine beaches, for example in Hawaii, and they are very distinctive. Olivine is a silicate mineral containing iron and magnesium, that is found in certain lavas. Here at Punta Cormorant, we had to sift the sand only a little to find many lovely small green olivine crystals.

Walking past this beach up a trail of sand and volcanic cinder we passed a lovely lagoon just as the first rays of the sun began to hit the trees at its edge. In the distance we saw a small group of Whimbrels, a wading bird with a long down-curved bill, at the far side of the lagoon, and closer to us a couple of Lava Herons.

Lava Heron

Crossing a short distance to another beach, this one a lovely white "flour" beach, the sun was just coming up. Greg warned us to be careful of Stingrays that could be in the water, and we did spot a few Sea Turtles in the edge of the waves.

Flour beach on Floreana

Watching for Sea Turtles

Pacific Green Sea Turtle

Moving over the black rocks were more of the bright orange Sally Lightfoot Crabs we had seen on the other islands, and hopping around on the beach was another Yellow Warbler, a common bird we had also already seen numerous times.

Yellow Warbler

Back on the Sagitta, we enjoyed a delicious breakfast, then had a briefing for our snorkel at Devil's Crown. This is a beautiful spot where there are dramatic outcroppings of rock above the surface of the water, and the rock formations cause a rather strong current that carries snorkelers who start at the right spot, around the outside of the rock formation and then into the center of an area ringed by these rocks. The marine life was fascinating, and it was fun to be carried in the current without much effort. The temperature of the water was a comfortable (in wetsuits) 71 degrees F.

Approaching Devil's Crown

On the approach to Devil's Crown in the panga, Greg identified a small group of White Vented Storm Petrels, flying low over the water in the distance. This is a small seabird that seems to patter over the water as it feeds. In the water at Devil's Crown we observed schools of Yellow Tailed Surgeonfish, beautiful King Angelfish, various sea stars including a beautiful blue one and the orange Bradley Sea Star, Creole Fish, and many other colorful fish. We had all wanted to see a shark, and indeed we spotted a White Tipped Reef Shark.

School of Yellow Tailed Surgeon Fish

King Angelfish

Greg specializes in videos of Galapagos marine life, and features many videos on his Web site. During our trip, which included snorkeling on about five of the seven days, he made at least 85 more short videos, each one showing a different species of marine life, which he shared with us each evening.

Greg Estes shooting underwater video

All if this was before lunch!

Post Office Bay

After lunch we visited one of the few purely tourist attractions on our itinerary - Post Office Bay. Back in the very early days of human visitors to Galapagos, when there was no mail service, a barrel was put here, in which the few inhabitants, or infrequent travelers, could leave messages to be picked up by people from a ship on a later visit, and hopefully delivered. 

Now, of course, there is government mail service to Galapagos. But tourists have taken over the tradition of using the post office barrel, which gave the name to Post Office Bay. There is no other sign of human habitation here, other than the foundation of a long-abandoned building nearby. Tourists from cruise ships leave postcards in the barrel, to be picked up by other tourists after them and delivered - days, months, or years later, or maybe never . . . We opened the barrel and found postcards to countries on many continents, and most of us kept a few with the intent to deliver them to people near where we live. According to tradition, they are supposed to be hand-delivered.

Post Office Barrel on Floreana

Beyond the Post Office barrel, a short way up a trail, is a large lava tube, with wooden stairs allowing people to go down and explore.

Stairs to lava tube on Floreana

That afternoon, the crew put up the sails on the Sagitta for the only time during our trip. There is not much wind here at this time of year, and we had been told in advance that at most they might put up the sails once. The boat was beautiful under sail.

Putting up the sails on Sagitta

NEXT POST: Isabela - Day 5

North Seymour, Galapagos Islands - Day 1

Not long after this first day in Galapagos we were already convinced that the way to get the most out of a visit here is to have Greg Estes as our guide. Later in the week we eventually learned there are 500 registered guides in Galapagos National Park, and Greg is the one who has been hired by photography crews from BBC and Discovery Channel, and groups like The Nature Conservancy and the best universities when they visit Galapagos. Greg and his wife Thalia Grant have been described as the world experts on Darwin in Galapagos and published a book by that name in 2009. He speaks knowledgeably about the latest research, the wildlife, plants and geology of the islands.


A scientist, naturalist, and photographer, holding a biology degree with honors from the U. of London, Greg has been doing research and guiding in Galapagos since 1982. Even more important for making the trip especially enjoyable as well as memorable, he is fun to be with - gregarious, good-natured, personable, patient, and an excellent story-teller with a warm sense of humor and a great laugh. He is awesome as a guide.  

Sagitta

This was the first day of a seven day adventure cruise in the Galapagos Islands. Greg met us at the airport in Baltra, for a short bus ride to our boat where we ate lunch while our luggage was loaded onto the boat along with food for a week for 16 guests, guide and crew. The Sagitta is a lovely yacht and will take us 500 miles through the archipelago over the next seven days.


After a quick transfer to North Seymour Island aboard the Sagitta, we made a dry landing from our panga onto lava rocks. 

The first bird we identified was a Swallow Tailed Gull in the water next to our boat, and another on the rocks near the trail. 

Swallow Tailed Gull

Magnificent and Frigate Birds soared above, and within a few feet we had to step over one of what would be many Sea Iguanas we would encounter throughout the week.  We hiked through endemic Palo Santo, a small tree found only in Galapagos, which had no leaves in late December.

We saw Blue Footed Boobies, both adults and chicks - several of them on or right next to the trail - as well as a Galapagos Dove, Yellow Warbler, and our first finch, a Small Ground Finch.

Blue Footed Booby on trail

The famous blue feet

Galapagos Dove

Male Magnificent Frigate Birds in mating display are very flamboyant with their inflated red throat pouches.

Magnificent Frigate Bird (male in mating display)

This Galapagos Land Iguana on North Seymour was a rich golden color. Later we noticed that these and most of the other animals vary in appearance from island to island.

Galapagos Land Iguana

Sea Lions lounged and posed on the sand as we completed our loop across the island towards the end of the afternoon.

NEXT POST: Santa Cruz, Galapagos Islands - Day 2