Floreana Island
After a high potency day on Isabela, full of energetic activities (hiking, swimming, biking and volley-ball playing), we started an early relaxing, beautiful day visiting the first Post Office in Ecuador. Post Office Bay on Floreana Island has been a point of reunion for exchanging mail for navigators in the South Pacific since 1793! We left our mail to be picked up and took away cards to be hand delivered. This pre-breakfast visit was followed by a wonderful Zodiac ride around La Loberia which means the sea lion nursery. We went back on board to get ready for a snorkelling excursion around Champion Islet. This tiny islet is the only place where the Floreana mockingbird now lives. After snorkelling (which we had a fabulous time with many fish, sea lions and sharks) we changed and freshened up and then returned to Champion Islet in the Zodiacs to search for the elusive mocking birds. We were delighted to find three of them.
Following lunch, we had the second excursion for snorkelers around Devil’s Crown in deep water with a current where we saw huge schools of fish. A group of kayakers took the yellow boats out and paddled into the shallow turquoise waters around La Loberia. We enjoyed getting extremely close to sea lions and sea turtles. At 4:00 pm we went ashore at Punta Cormorant on the olivine beach for a lovely walk along an easy cinder trail that bordered a brackish lagoon. Here we observed some 25 beautiful native greater flamingos feeding. Returning toward the ship as the sunset, we thought the day was over, but our Zodiac driver Andres spotted a big pod of bottle nose dolphins. All four Zodiacs motored a couple miles out to sea and we stayed with the dolphins until dark. They rode the bows of the pangas, and leapt and splashed around us! Floreana was definitely extremely generous with its natural beauty today.
After a high potency day on Isabela, full of energetic activities (hiking, swimming, biking and volley-ball playing), we started an early relaxing, beautiful day visiting the first Post Office in Ecuador. Post Office Bay on Floreana Island has been a point of reunion for exchanging mail for navigators in the South Pacific since 1793! We left our mail to be picked up and took away cards to be hand delivered. This pre-breakfast visit was followed by a wonderful Zodiac ride around La Loberia which means the sea lion nursery. We went back on board to get ready for a snorkelling excursion around Champion Islet. This tiny islet is the only place where the Floreana mockingbird now lives. After snorkelling (which we had a fabulous time with many fish, sea lions and sharks) we changed and freshened up and then returned to Champion Islet in the Zodiacs to search for the elusive mocking birds. We were delighted to find three of them.
Following lunch, we had the second excursion for snorkelers around Devil’s Crown in deep water with a current where we saw huge schools of fish. A group of kayakers took the yellow boats out and paddled into the shallow turquoise waters around La Loberia. We enjoyed getting extremely close to sea lions and sea turtles. At 4:00 pm we went ashore at Punta Cormorant on the olivine beach for a lovely walk along an easy cinder trail that bordered a brackish lagoon. Here we observed some 25 beautiful native greater flamingos feeding. Returning toward the ship as the sunset, we thought the day was over, but our Zodiac driver Andres spotted a big pod of bottle nose dolphins. All four Zodiacs motored a couple miles out to sea and we stayed with the dolphins until dark. They rode the bows of the pangas, and leapt and splashed around us! Floreana was definitely extremely generous with its natural beauty today.
