Our adventure onboard the National Geographic Endeavour brought us today to Champion Islet. It was a beautiful morning, with a clear blue sky and great conditions for our morning outings. We offered Zodiac rides around the small islet, in order to observe Galapagos sea lions, the great prickly pear cactus and many species of sea birds that exist here. We were not disappointed, for we saw many swallow-tailed gulls, red-billed tropicbirds, Galapagos shearwaters, brown noddies, ruddy turnstones, Nazca and blue-footed boobies, and to our surprise, a juvenile red-footed booby was spotted! To top it all off, and thanks to the great eyes of our Zodiac drivers, we found the rare Floreana mockingbird. It was amazing to see this bird feeding off of the nectar from the yellow cactus flower—a unique moment that resulted in wonderful pictures!
For our non-snorkelers there were glass-bottom boat rides to explore the underwater world of the Galapagos. We had a great outing, with good visibility, plenty of fish, and great explanations from our naturalist, Jonathan, who led the outing. The second option at Champion Islet was deep water snorkeling. This area has been referred to as a living aquarium, and today it was spectacular. We saw huge aggregations of king angelfish, razor surgeonfish, creoles, Panamic sergeant majors, grunts, chromis, as well as several species of parrotfish, wrasse, snappers, trumpetfish, cornetfish, playful Galapagos sea lions and white-tipped reef sharks! This snorkeling outing was just overwhelming!
As we were enjoying a great lunch, the National Geographic Endeavour was repositioned towards Post Office Bay. Floreana Island is known as the “mystery island”. This was the first island in the archipelago to be visited by humans, and centuries ago it was home to pirates, whalers, buccaneers and the first colony of Ecuadorians. This afternoon the weather conditions were perfect for beach activities, as well as two rounds of kayaking and the visit to the famous barrel, where our guests have the opportunity to leave postcards and look through the cards that have been left in the barrel, to see if they can hand devlier any of them to their destinations. This used to be the only way of communicating with their homelands for the sailors who passed through, and today we participated in keeping this old tradition alive.
As soon as all the guests were on board, we pulled anchor and sailed towards Santa Cruz Island, tomorrow’s destination. It was an awesome day in paradise!
