Floreana Island
Today we visited an extraordinary island in the archipelago—Floreana, officially named Santa Maria after one of Columbus’s caravels. Floreana is the island that has had the legendary post office barrel since the 1700s. Today we still use this system with our guests to send letters and postcards, hoping one day they will reach their destination in the old-fashioned way of personal delivery.
Floreana is amazing in regards to wildlife as well as human history. In the morning we disembarked at Punta Cormorant on the north side of the island. Here the island presents a stunning landscape full of old volcanoes and a brown beach at the landing site. We landed and started to explore the place; just a few yards away from the beach we found a flock of flamingos carrying out their courtship dance for a new breeding season!
Conditions are right in terms of food supplies for these birds and all the birds of the region. The nesting is starting to take place all aver the Galápagos and will go on for the rest of the year. Soon we will start to find baby birds of different types in the main breeding colonies. Flamingos just started on this island and in a few months we’ll see some babies on the shore of the lagoon!
Later in the morning we explored a different site. This time it was Champion Island for a Zodiac ride for wildlife observation and later on for snorkeling. Here we explored the undersea realm with lots of fish of different kinds and many young sea lions that played with us all along the shore. It was just spectacular to encounter these marine mammals while snorkeling.
In the afternoon we landed at Post Office Bay where we left some postcards and picked up some to take home and deliver. Later we went kayaking and explored the place from the zodiacs and once again we proved that these islands are full of wild life.
It was just amazing!
