Southern Isabela Island

We had a wonderful night and a great sleep – which we deserved since 30 of us had been up between 0130 and 0415 during the early morning hours on August 12 to watch the Perseids meteorite shower. It had not exactly been a “shower” - rather a constant drip - but among us all we saw between 20-30 meteorites, some very bright and satisfying! A group of us stayed up until we crossed the equator line just after 0400 and became Galápagos shellbacks. So, on Wednesday night we were delighted that the ship was anchored in the calm bay off Fernandina all night long so we could make up the sleep we lost while enjoying the falling stars and the non-falling ones, too.

The Captain hauled up the hook at 0500 this morning and we navigated across the Bolivar Channel to drop our anchor at the base of Volcan Alcedo. This is an interesting area geologically since several miles of the coast line were uplifted by 4-5 meters in 1954. There are huge coral heads well inland along the trails. We had long and short hiking options this morning and we found at least a dozen large colorful land iguanas along both trails. It is mating season for these impressive reptiles and many of the males were head bobbing and defending their territories. Fausto spied an octopus hiding among the rocks at a quiet little beach, and four tawny juvenile hawks flew down to inspect us at the landing beach. Guests swam with feeding penguins and a cormorant, and some of the kids dug in the sand. We were reluctant to leave this tiny, pristine and peaceful beach but did not want to either miss lunch today or have to spend a week on shore waiting for the National Geographic Islander to return here next voyage… So, we unenthusiastically boarded the Zodiacs and headed back to the ship.

After lunch and a welcome siesta (the kids played cards in the lounge since they are having far too much fun to take a siesta), I was giving a presentation on my research in the lounge. With but 10 slides to go, the bridge sent a crew member running to tell me they had spotted whales. Without hesitancy we abandoned the talk as the Captain turned the ship, and soon to our surprise and delighted we were again privileged to observe BLUE WHALES! Wow – amazing! We haven’t seen blue whales in Galápagos all year on this ship and today there were three of them! We got fabulous looks since they surfaced to blow and roll near the ship multiple times. I called the crew and everyone came out on deck to admire the largest animal on our planet.

It was extremely difficult to make the decision to leave the whales and return to our course. But I knew that the afternoon’s hike and Zodiac ride would be well worth our time, so we left the whales and went to our anchorage. The crew quickly lowered the Zodiacs and two groups of lava hikers headed across the expansive lava flows between the southern volcanoes of Sierra Negra and Cerro Azul. They had a marvelous walk followed by a short Zodiac ride. Graciela took a group of adults and I took a group of kids for a Zodiac ride to see rays, cormorants, turtles and a lava shelf full of huge marine iguanas and over twenty cute penguins. It has been yet another fantastic day in the magical islas encantadas!