Floreana
Today we spent the entire day visiting Floreana and the islets associated with this lovely island. The island was not named for its flowers (flores = flowers in Spanish) but rather after one of Ecuador’s first presidents: Juan Jose Flores.
Our pre-breakfast outing to the sea lion nursery (La Loberia) and Post Office Bay were a success. There is no prettier time of the day than the early morning and even a sea lion colony is a fairly peaceful place at this hour. Our disembarkation at the beach was exciting and not completely dry…but who really expects to escape wet pants on a panga ride? Some of our guests found post cards to take home and hand deliver and thus we continued the mail system started in 1793 by Captain James Colnett.
Following a delicious breakfast of french toast and cheesie-eggs, muchines (yuca fritters) and fresh tropical fruits, we headed out in the Zodiacs to either snorkel or cruise in the glass bottom boat. Sea lions delighted us with their graceful aquatic swirls and spins and despite some chop on the ocean surface we saw plenty of colorful fish.
In the afternoon we made a wet landing on a greenish beach where the sand contains millions of tiny olivine crystals. Flamingos, pintail ducks and black-necked stilts were feeding in a shallow brackish water lagoon behind the olivine beach. We followed a cinder trail through a garden of endemic composites: Scalesia and Lecocarpus shrubs that are found nowhere else in the world. And, to our delight, when we followed the trail over a rise and reached a beach of fine white sand, we found sea turtles mating in the surf. One of the turtles had two remoras skittering around on its wet shell. These fish were surely wondering where in the heck their host was taking them! None of us have ever seen a remora on land before! One just never knows what surprises each new day may bring here in the Enchanted Islands of Galapagos.
Today we spent the entire day visiting Floreana and the islets associated with this lovely island. The island was not named for its flowers (flores = flowers in Spanish) but rather after one of Ecuador’s first presidents: Juan Jose Flores.
Our pre-breakfast outing to the sea lion nursery (La Loberia) and Post Office Bay were a success. There is no prettier time of the day than the early morning and even a sea lion colony is a fairly peaceful place at this hour. Our disembarkation at the beach was exciting and not completely dry…but who really expects to escape wet pants on a panga ride? Some of our guests found post cards to take home and hand deliver and thus we continued the mail system started in 1793 by Captain James Colnett.
Following a delicious breakfast of french toast and cheesie-eggs, muchines (yuca fritters) and fresh tropical fruits, we headed out in the Zodiacs to either snorkel or cruise in the glass bottom boat. Sea lions delighted us with their graceful aquatic swirls and spins and despite some chop on the ocean surface we saw plenty of colorful fish.
In the afternoon we made a wet landing on a greenish beach where the sand contains millions of tiny olivine crystals. Flamingos, pintail ducks and black-necked stilts were feeding in a shallow brackish water lagoon behind the olivine beach. We followed a cinder trail through a garden of endemic composites: Scalesia and Lecocarpus shrubs that are found nowhere else in the world. And, to our delight, when we followed the trail over a rise and reached a beach of fine white sand, we found sea turtles mating in the surf. One of the turtles had two remoras skittering around on its wet shell. These fish were surely wondering where in the heck their host was taking them! None of us have ever seen a remora on land before! One just never knows what surprises each new day may bring here in the Enchanted Islands of Galapagos.
