Floreana Island
We anchored early in the morning at Post Office Bay, Floreana Island. This place is the richest in human history on the archipelago. A pre-breakfast visit showed us the oldest mail system in the Pacific: The Post Office Barrel. Like whalers did in the past, we disembarked in this bay to walk and find hidden behind the vegetation a picturesque barrel that has been connecting the Galápagos Islands with the world for centuries. We sent our postcards and picked up old ones with the promise to hand deliver them.
Later on we moved to Champion Islet. This place is one of our best snorkeling sites. We swam with sea lions and with all different kinds of colorful fish. Some of our guests enjoyed the water world without getting wet, from our glass bottom boat! We looked for the Floreana Mockingbird, whose species numbers no more than 500 individuals left. The morning couldn’t be better…. could it?
Well, as we were going back on board, we heard from the ship the good news: whales! Humpback whales in the distance! Still in our wetsuits, we went on the Zodiacs to see these giants closer up: a mother and her baby. It was an incredible show!
But the morning doesn’t finish there… suddenly we were surrounded by very curious birds, juvenile red-footed boobies. They were so close to our Zodiacs that you could have touched them by uplifting your hand…
For the afternoon activities we moved to Punta Cormorant, our next visitor site. We kayaked and enjoyed the beach until 4:00 when we started our walk. What an amazing place! Flamingos were absolutely one of the highlights of the day. The scenery mixed with the colors of sunset was the perfect way to say goodbye to Floreana, the Mystery Island.
