Floreana Island

Last night we navigated all the way from Isabela to Floreana and arrived early this morning.

Floreana Island is one with a lot of human history and lots of places for different activities. This was the island first colonized by Ecuador in 1832. Before that we had the visit of pirates, privateers and whalers that one way or another enriched the history of the archipelago. Some of these early visitors had places to rest and hide up in the highlands.

This morning, we visited one of these historical places, the wooden barrel on Post Office Bay. Once there, we followed tradition and looked for letters with the premise to hand deliver them, just like the whalers did in the past. We were very successful and found many going to different places around the world.

After breakfast, we navigated to Champion Islet and went looking for the Floreana mockingbird; this bird is almost extinct and exists only on two islets near Floreana Island. We found a few birds and even though they are a very elusive species, we spotted them feeding on the colorful flowers of Opuntias or prickly pear cactus. One of the nicest aspects of Champion is the chance to observe so many birds nesting in small holes and crevices on the cliffs. There were frigate birds chasing red billed tropic birds, Nazca boobies and many swallow tailed gulls resting.

This afternoon we went to Cormorant point, this was a great place to observe the nesting sites of sea turtles, flamingoes, and lots of shore birds. Beyond all these different creatures, we also learned about the many unique species of plants found nowhere else in the world. We had a nice contrast of blue skies and a couple of big dark clouds. At the end of the day we had no rain, only great memories.