Floreana Island
Today we woke up at one of the most historical places in the Galápagos: “Post Office Bay.” Llocated at the northern tip of the island of Floreana, this has been, for a long time, a perfect calm anchorage for pirates, buccaneers, privateers, whalers, scientific expeditions and many other explorers from the past.
It was probably a Captain named James Colnett who was exploring this area (in order to see how good it was to hunt whales) who had the idea to use a barrel on top of a post with a little roof, which could serve as a mailbox for the whalers to send or receive letters from their families. Any letters sent had to be hand delivered by those who, after filling their casks with whale oil, were ready to go back to their home countries. To date, we continue this tradition, and early in the morning we went to see if there were any letters or postcards that we could take home and hand deliver. We also left some for ourselves, relatives or friends to see how long the system will take to get them to their destinations. There was a chance for Lisa and her little friend Spyke (see photo) to see this place and have their picture taken at this famous location.
The National Geographic Endeavour sailed us around to Champion Islet for our water activities. Guests chose among deep water snorkeling or bay snorkeling; a glass bottom boat ride; or taking a zodiac cruise. It did not matter which was chosen – we have all been delighted by the rich wildlife and the landscape surrounding us. This included many species of colorful fish, star fishes of different colors and shapes (including “chocolate chip”), a sea turtle sleeping at the bottom, and the birds in a frenetic flight in and out their nests on the cliffs, like the red-billed tropicbird in today’s photo.
But we are not done with the day yet. There is more, and the afternoon is again full of many activities – a kayak around the bay at Punta Cormorant, or simply a swim or a walk along a green-olivine volcanic sand beach and finally, to end with, a walk to a brackish lagoon were flamingos slowly filter the organic ooze and their favorite brine shrimp which provides them the pigments that will make them the pinkest flamingos of the world.
We continued our walk across the point to a flour beach formed by a very fine white-coralline sand, which is also a green sea turtle egg-laying beach. Frigate birds flew overhead in search of the very fragile turtle hatchlings that will try to make their way in to the water with the aid of the night and the moonlight reflected in the ocean to finally disappear in the depths of this magic sea. How many of them will come back to this beach, we don´t know, but the estimation is that only one out of a hundred will make it to full grown size.
The sun is fast going down into the west; we leave the island behind feeling the connection with the air, ocean and earth energy.
