Floreana Island
Human history of Galápagos can be as interesting as the unique flora and fauna we found here. Back in the latest 1790’s a wooden barrel was established on Floreana Island to be used as the first and very original post office on the islands. Whalers were abundant at that time around the islands and crew members stayed at sea for months without any contact with their beloved relatives. The idea was to drop letters at the barrel with the hope that the next ship going back home would take and hand deliver them. The idea wasn’t bad and for many, many years, letters, news and postcards reached civilization that way.
The tradition continues still today and every week we stop at Post Office Bay to collect a few letters and drop many more for the next visitors. Sometimes, letters arrived to their destinations faster that if they were posted through our current Ecuadorian mail!
After doing our homework, we returned back on board for a delicious breakfast and, soon after, we had an incredible sight of hundreds of bottlenose dolphins jumping around our ship. We all ran to the front of the boat and had the most incredible moments with these fantastic and playful animals.
With that image in our minds, we headed for our next outing to search for the elusive Charles mockingbird at Champion Islet, the only place in the world where we can see this unique bird.
Snorkeling was the next activity, and we had a chance to play with young sea lions, and see hundreds of different fish, sea stars, sea urchins and many more marine creatures.
We did not want to leave the water but it was already noon and lunch was waiting for us.
At 3:00pm some of us went for a kayak ride following the coast of Punta Cormorant and, later on, we took a short walk to find several flamingos that displayed for us their beautiful pink color. Under a little bit of garua, we discover the very interesting human history of Floreana and finally understood why it is called the mysterious island...
