Floreana Island
The third island we have assigned in our itinerary is Charles, Santa Maria or Floreana as we call it today; Floreana is an island that has left an extremely rich human history behind, not only because the Ecuadorian goverment claimed position of the islands back in 1835 by establishing a small settlement here, but also because during the sixteen and seventeen hundreds this particular place was often visited by British whalers, pirates and buccaneers…
As matter of fact, we started the day visiting Post Office Bay, the mail barrel placed here by James Colnett back in 1793 with the purpose of keeping friends and family connected during the long voyages British whalers took around the south pacific region of the world. Today we have managed to keep the tradition alive and use it as an honorable mail system that works well. We go through the mail that is there, taking postcards and letters that can be hand-delivered by our current visitors. The idea behind it is to meet people that have also had the Galápagos experience.
Santa Maria is also known as the mystery island because it was here where some of the strange events with disappearances of people occurred back in the 1920’s. Today the weather seemed to have known about this reputation. It rained all day long, but that did not prevent us from having our interesting activities. The snorkeling conditions were extremely good. We had a chance to see different species of sharks which does not happen all the time. Punta Cormorant in the afternoon had a big colony of flamingos that seemed to be enjoying the waters of the brackish pond that had been replenished by the rain.
It was wonderful to see how beneficial the rain is for all the species that have had to adapt to the extremely harsh conditions of life in this particularly interesting group of islands.
We realized that fresh water is always a gift!
