This morning we had a pre-breakfast outing, great for early risers and photography enthusiasts wishing to capture the best light of the day. Our welcoming party was a small colony of sea lions and some nesting blue-footed boobies on a green-olivine beach in Punta Cormorant, and as we continued along our trail we observed an active nesting sea turtle site as well as a lagoon where we found flamingos for the first time. These birds are a recent arrival to the Galapagos and have made themselves permanent residents of this archipelago.

Later we navigated to Champion Islet where the last remnant population of the Floreana mockingbird can be seen. We then headed to Post Office Bay, where Charles Darwin landed in 1835 during his worldwide voyage. Our guests kept the tradition of hand delivering correspondence to their destination, just as the whalers and pirates did hundreds of years ago.

To end our day, we celebrated with a wine tasting session on the sky deck, looking forward to tomorrow’s next wildlife encounters.