Floreana Island
This morning at 7:00am we had a pre-breakfast landing at the beach of Post Office Bay. This location may not be the most scenic of the Galápagos visitor sites but is very important at the historical level. A wooden barrel was placed in this area in the late 18th century by English whaling vessels and soon the American whalers and all the passing by ships were using it as a mailing system as well. The central idea of the barrel was to facilitate the delivery of any piece of mail of the outbound ships by the inbound whalers who would then pick up the mail and take it home with them. We followed the tradition for many of our guess took some postcards out of the barrel with plans to deliver them; some others left their own postcards hoping that somebody will do the same with theirs.
After this early visit we had breakfast and then took a Zodiac ride along the coast of Champion Islet where we found the elusive Floreana mockingbird!! These small birds escaped feral cats and rats on the main island of Floreana, and now they inhabit this small islet. Furthermore, we saw some red billed tropic birds; swallow tail gulls and flocks of Galápagos shearwaters.
Back on board we quickly changed into our wetsuits and went snorkeling. We spent a long time playing with sea lions and saw large schools of Yellow tailed surgeon fish, Black striped Salemas and many more fish species.
At 12:30pm lunch was served, and at 2:00pm we departed for kayaking activities that lasted until four o’clock in the afternoon. We went ashore to visit Punta Cormorant, disembarking at a green sandy beach which has this color from its olivine formation. We had a great and pleasant surprise! Finally after three months we could see again Greater flamingos around the brackish lagoon that is located some feet away from the olivine beach. From the lagoon we walked all the way to a “white flour” sandy beach where we saw many stingrays and Pacific green sea turtles. On the way back we had golden finale, a migratory peregrine falcon was observed attacking a flock of whimbrels in the lagoon. Right after this sighting we came back on board the National Geographic Islander. Beau Sylte our video chronicler showed us all a preview of what he has been filming during the week – it was fantastic. Later on a barbeque dinner was served on the sky deck followed by salsa and merengue lessons by the Staff. What a great day!
