5-13
Today I took a bit of a more expensive tour to Seymour Norte. Elisha stayed back in Santa Cruz and visited Tortuga beach and some other sights.
My trip was absolutely amazing! The galapagos experience that I expected. From the port in north Santa Cruz, I boarded a super fancy yacht where we first headed to Bachas beach on Santa cruz. At bachas beach, a beautiful white flour sand beach, we saw marine iguanas, marine turtle nesting sights, the famous sally lightfoot crabs, and pink flamingos. I was with a family of 8 from New Jersey/New York who took a liking to me and couldn´t believe how long I was traveling nor how cheaply I was doing the galapagos. They enjoyed my stories and kept buying me beers. The captain also liked me and let me drive the yacht to Seymour Norte.
When we arrived, we boarded a little zodiac to take us to the rocky cliff landing on Seymour norte. Here we did a loop trail through some amazing wildlife. We saw countless numbers of the loveable and iconic Blue-Foote boobies and the magnificent and greater Frigate birds. The boobies were watching eggs, doing their blue footed dance to attract mates or hanging out with their mate. They were everywhere and all over. We could get within 1 feet of them. Same with the frigate birds. The male frigate birds are famous for puffing up this huge red ballon type thing from their necks in order to attract a mate. On the island we also saw lava lizards, marine iguanas, and the giant land iguanas as well as lots of other birds. We also some some sea wolves (similar to sea lions, but a slightly different species). In the distance we could see the isles of Daphne major and Daphne minor which are significant to me bc it is where a lot of the research on Darwin´s finches ocurred and in Population and Ecosystem Bio with Dr. Walser, we had read the book the beak of the finch that had the research take place there.
The galapagos are cool bc of the lack of predators and the relative lack of people and hunting (as well as just the type of animals), the animals show little fear of humans. You can walk right up to them and they won´t run away. In fact, they often come right up to you. While we were waiting for the zodiac to return, a giant sea wolf just jumped right up towards us and we had to jump out of the way as it moved along to find a nice rock to nap on.
This galapagos experience today was just like the galapagos of my dreams. All these iconic species. Tons of them, and being able to get so close to them, even though they were nesting or going about their intricate mating rituals and mate attracting rituals. I can still remember the national geographic pop out book that was about the Galapagos islands that mom used to read us and this was just like this. I remember the tab you used to pull to make the blue feet of the boobies dance. And now I got to actually watch it in real life!
Elisha and I met up when I arrived. We went to the fish market which was a cool scene. There was a whole bunch of pelicans begging for fish as well as a sea lion acting like a dog and begging for fish. The sea lion was getting in the way of one of the guys cutting up the fish and he had to straddle the thing in order to continue his job! In the evening we walked out onto the pier where we saw a sea lion snoring right on one of the pier benches!
Of course, with a name like the blue footed boobies, there are lots of funny plays on the name. Shirts all around here are sold that say "I love boobies" and have two blue feet drawn. Yesterday, when Elisha and I went to Floreana, there were some inhabitants of Floreana on the boat. Floreana is tiny at about 100 people and is one of only 4 inhabited islands with Isabella, San Cristobol, and Santa Cruz being the others (Santa Cruz is the most populated). There were 4 mothers on the boat (interestingly it was dia de las madres) and all 4 were breast feeding. We both laughed bc before we had even made it to the island, we had seen lots of boobies.
Tomorrow we leave for a 6 day 5 night cruise around Isla Isabella, so if you don´t hear for us for a while, that is why. Bon Voyage!
Today I took a bit of a more expensive tour to Seymour Norte. Elisha stayed back in Santa Cruz and visited Tortuga beach and some other sights.
My trip was absolutely amazing! The galapagos experience that I expected. From the port in north Santa Cruz, I boarded a super fancy yacht where we first headed to Bachas beach on Santa cruz. At bachas beach, a beautiful white flour sand beach, we saw marine iguanas, marine turtle nesting sights, the famous sally lightfoot crabs, and pink flamingos. I was with a family of 8 from New Jersey/New York who took a liking to me and couldn´t believe how long I was traveling nor how cheaply I was doing the galapagos. They enjoyed my stories and kept buying me beers. The captain also liked me and let me drive the yacht to Seymour Norte.
When we arrived, we boarded a little zodiac to take us to the rocky cliff landing on Seymour norte. Here we did a loop trail through some amazing wildlife. We saw countless numbers of the loveable and iconic Blue-Foote boobies and the magnificent and greater Frigate birds. The boobies were watching eggs, doing their blue footed dance to attract mates or hanging out with their mate. They were everywhere and all over. We could get within 1 feet of them. Same with the frigate birds. The male frigate birds are famous for puffing up this huge red ballon type thing from their necks in order to attract a mate. On the island we also saw lava lizards, marine iguanas, and the giant land iguanas as well as lots of other birds. We also some some sea wolves (similar to sea lions, but a slightly different species). In the distance we could see the isles of Daphne major and Daphne minor which are significant to me bc it is where a lot of the research on Darwin´s finches ocurred and in Population and Ecosystem Bio with Dr. Walser, we had read the book the beak of the finch that had the research take place there.
The galapagos are cool bc of the lack of predators and the relative lack of people and hunting (as well as just the type of animals), the animals show little fear of humans. You can walk right up to them and they won´t run away. In fact, they often come right up to you. While we were waiting for the zodiac to return, a giant sea wolf just jumped right up towards us and we had to jump out of the way as it moved along to find a nice rock to nap on.
This galapagos experience today was just like the galapagos of my dreams. All these iconic species. Tons of them, and being able to get so close to them, even though they were nesting or going about their intricate mating rituals and mate attracting rituals. I can still remember the national geographic pop out book that was about the Galapagos islands that mom used to read us and this was just like this. I remember the tab you used to pull to make the blue feet of the boobies dance. And now I got to actually watch it in real life!
Elisha and I met up when I arrived. We went to the fish market which was a cool scene. There was a whole bunch of pelicans begging for fish as well as a sea lion acting like a dog and begging for fish. The sea lion was getting in the way of one of the guys cutting up the fish and he had to straddle the thing in order to continue his job! In the evening we walked out onto the pier where we saw a sea lion snoring right on one of the pier benches!
Of course, with a name like the blue footed boobies, there are lots of funny plays on the name. Shirts all around here are sold that say "I love boobies" and have two blue feet drawn. Yesterday, when Elisha and I went to Floreana, there were some inhabitants of Floreana on the boat. Floreana is tiny at about 100 people and is one of only 4 inhabited islands with Isabella, San Cristobol, and Santa Cruz being the others (Santa Cruz is the most populated). There were 4 mothers on the boat (interestingly it was dia de las madres) and all 4 were breast feeding. We both laughed bc before we had even made it to the island, we had seen lots of boobies.
Tomorrow we leave for a 6 day 5 night cruise around Isla Isabella, so if you don´t hear for us for a while, that is why. Bon Voyage!
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