Sunday 17th April:
We know the routine by now, up at 5.30am, breakfast at 6.30am, and off for the next adventure by 07.15am, and today it's hot. We're on the island of Fernandina this morning and it's a beach/lava stroll, not as arduous as yesterday, to visit hundreds of marine iguanas and their deceased ancestors. Many of the iguanas are dying because there is insufficient food, and the brown seaweed does not sustain them; some of the iguanas are even cosied up to their dead relatives.
Flightless cormorants are also plentiful, stretching out their useless wings to dry them off after diving as far as 50 metres down in the sea to catch fish. They flew to Galapagos originally, but food was so abundant in the sea that gradually they didn't need to fly any more, and now they are flightless.
I guess one of the inhabitants we expected to see in the wild was the giant tortoises, but they have so many predators, including the local population who would still eat the meat of tortoises until 20 years ago, that they are now only bred in captivity. Too many introduced species have decimated the giant tortoises that they are only re-introduced into the wild after breeding programmes. One introduced species was the goat, and eventually they culled 200,000 goats to give the indigenous species a chance to survive. There are still goats but now in captivity and controlled by the local farmers.
Our second snorkelling session was in warmer water than yesterday, and it didn't disappoint. The water was also clearer, and the fish were plentiful, but the star of the show is always the turtles, so graceful underwater. Again thirty minutes is enough for most of us and we head back for lunch. Immediately the boat is underway and we're back to Isabela, to Tagus Cove, and some more snorkelling and also kayaking, should be fun.
Boy it's a busy day, and straight after lunch it's time to kayak. It doesn't go well and Lorna cannot get comfortable in the kayak, and we try another, still not OK, so Lorna withdraws and I paddle with Yann, one of the boat boys. I pass on the next snorkelling expedition, and it seems I don't miss much, no sharks sighted. The afternoon finishes with a walk up to Darwin lake, a small lake in a small caldera, and not particularly scenic.
The boat is underway immediately we get back until 4am, it makes conversation very difficult. At 8pm we all trundle up to the bridge to take a photograph of navigational equipment reading 0:00:000, or zero degrees latitude as we cross the equator. Interestingly we're at around 91 degrees longitude, just a quarter way round the globe from Greenwich. At around 3am we cross the equator the other way having just rounded the northern tip of Isabela island on our way to Santiago island.
We know the routine by now, up at 5.30am, breakfast at 6.30am, and off for the next adventure by 07.15am, and today it's hot. We're on the island of Fernandina this morning and it's a beach/lava stroll, not as arduous as yesterday, to visit hundreds of marine iguanas and their deceased ancestors. Many of the iguanas are dying because there is insufficient food, and the brown seaweed does not sustain them; some of the iguanas are even cosied up to their dead relatives.
Flightless cormorants are also plentiful, stretching out their useless wings to dry them off after diving as far as 50 metres down in the sea to catch fish. They flew to Galapagos originally, but food was so abundant in the sea that gradually they didn't need to fly any more, and now they are flightless.
I guess one of the inhabitants we expected to see in the wild was the giant tortoises, but they have so many predators, including the local population who would still eat the meat of tortoises until 20 years ago, that they are now only bred in captivity. Too many introduced species have decimated the giant tortoises that they are only re-introduced into the wild after breeding programmes. One introduced species was the goat, and eventually they culled 200,000 goats to give the indigenous species a chance to survive. There are still goats but now in captivity and controlled by the local farmers.
Our second snorkelling session was in warmer water than yesterday, and it didn't disappoint. The water was also clearer, and the fish were plentiful, but the star of the show is always the turtles, so graceful underwater. Again thirty minutes is enough for most of us and we head back for lunch. Immediately the boat is underway and we're back to Isabela, to Tagus Cove, and some more snorkelling and also kayaking, should be fun.
Boy it's a busy day, and straight after lunch it's time to kayak. It doesn't go well and Lorna cannot get comfortable in the kayak, and we try another, still not OK, so Lorna withdraws and I paddle with Yann, one of the boat boys. I pass on the next snorkelling expedition, and it seems I don't miss much, no sharks sighted. The afternoon finishes with a walk up to Darwin lake, a small lake in a small caldera, and not particularly scenic.
The boat is underway immediately we get back until 4am, it makes conversation very difficult. At 8pm we all trundle up to the bridge to take a photograph of navigational equipment reading 0:00:000, or zero degrees latitude as we cross the equator. Interestingly we're at around 91 degrees longitude, just a quarter way round the globe from Greenwich. At around 3am we cross the equator the other way having just rounded the northern tip of Isabela island on our way to Santiago island.
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