ISLA SAN CRISTOBAL 2

Day 66 14.09.15

We woke up, got ready and headed for breakfast to the restaurant we had been for lunch yesterday.

It was pretty much a feast. We had yoghurt with granola, as well as eggs and toast, strawberry jam and passion fruit juice.

I headed up to the snorkelling gear shop to get my broken snorkel changed and, yes I did cave in, to rent out a wet suit.

Then it was time to head out to the pier to hop on a boat. We were going to ride to Sea Lion Island.

The boat was small but speedy, and even had a small top deck.

Obviously the first opportunity I got I was up there, eager to see anything, especially sea turtles and swimming iguanas.

We saw some iguanas swimming and even saw the outlines of a sea turtle!

We eventually moved on to actually go snorkelling with them though.

We drove around San Cristobal and observed the ragged shoreline, dominated by volcanic stones that were covered in lichen.

Driving fast is really fun in these speedboats!

We also spotted some birds on the way, but my zoom wasn’t good enough to entirely capture it – and like said before I cannot tell you which bird it is…

We got to the bay from which we were going to land on Sea Lion Island or Isla de los lobos de mar.

The island didn’t seem too inviting, and there was only a little piece of pier in concrete to which the boat could manoeuvre. We all made it to the island dry, even though in some cases it was close on verging in a wet landing :).

The first birds we saw were frigate birds sitting in a tree. On the left with the white head you can see a chick, and on the right side a female. (I can only tell, because I know that the male looks different…)

Different in the sense that the male has a red bloated sack like chest, which he pumps up to impress his females.

See for yourself if she was impressed…

There were also a couple of bugs on the island, such as this fly like insect. I left it on my leg just long enough to take a picture and for it to bite me. Thankfully it wasn’t stinging like a horsefly.

We also got to see Galapagos cotton. Here are the two stages – closed, and with flower. The bud then falls off and looks like cotton.

I just thought the flowers looked lovely.

It was quite dangerous walking on the wobbly rocks, as you never knew which one would move or give away, and which one was so fixed in between other rocks that it would stay put.

This didn’t seem to bother the little lava lizards.

We saw the frigate birds roaming about, building their nests as it soon again be nesting time.

Along the rocks we then saw, what I would call a photographic album just plainly “nature vol. 1”, a series of carcasses and skeletons. I thought you might like this.

Crabs

Skull – probably of a sea lion

Dead iguana carcass

The tail of an iguana

Dead iguana

Carcass of a dead sea lion baby

On the other side of this island the actual volcanic rocks came more into plain sight and walking along them was still very challenging.

We were rewarded however when we got to the place where the blue footed boobies, yes they are called that, were nesting. Here we can see male and female boobies. They can be distinguished by their sounds, their size and their coloured feet. The one on the right is a female, which has darker blue feet, is slightly larger, and makes sounds like a small whistle, whereas the male sounds more like a duck.

More frigates flying about

We even saw some little Darwin finches.

And of course, what you would expect to find on the Sea Lion Island – sea lions.

We saw several mothers with their young and even discovered a freshly “placed” placenta of a sea lion mother. We could see the sea lion and we also couldn’t find the freshly “hatched” sea lion cub, but it was cool to know that had we been there earlier we might have been able to see a sea lion birth.

The sea lions were all spread out underneath shrubs, drying up but staying in the shade.

Alongside them were nesting blue footed boobies everywhere. This one where the chick decided to show us he bottom.

We saw some eggs, that had obviously no longer carried living babies and so where neglected. (They also had a light blue shimmer to them.)

More iguanas.

We saw a blue footed boobie, where we could see the head of its chick pop up from out of its nest.

We saw a pair of blue footed bobbies, where the father had just arrived with new food, and so we were waiting to see whether he would feed the chick by regurgitating its fish in front of us or not. We waited for a while, he didn’t and so we moved on.

Nature Vol. 2 continues:

Dead sea lion baby – obviously it passed away for another reason that starvation.

Dying sea lion baby. No the park members cannot help these little cubs. It is part of the survival of the fittest and means that the natural sea lion population regulates itself. Yes of course, it is hard to see such a little on still breathing and knowing that it will eventually die, but most likely the mother had two cubs and could not afford to look after both.

There was even some recycling going on, or at least cleaning up – soon a frigate landed next to the sea lion placenta and started picking at it. Hello nature!

The crabs were quite large here and were moving about all over the rocks.

We got back onto the boat, only to realise we had forgotten two of our group members on the island, so we headed back again and picked them up. They had stayed with the male and female to see whether they would regurgitate the food, but even then the bird hadn’t done so.

We drove to the bay and were nearly ready to jump in and snorkel, wet suit was already on, when our guide spotted the dolphins outside of the bay. In order not to loose them, we headed out to meet them. Oh boy, was it a great experience!

They chose the boat as their new plaything and decided to swim with it, jump up and down next to the boat and just be playful around us.

Their pod was very large and we could see several baby dolphins swimming along with the boat.

It was great!

We headed back to the bay where we were going to go snorkelling and hopped in. It was very shallow and we immediately saw our first sea turtle underwater.

We followed them around while they were grazing, or swimming to the surface of the water to catch a breath of air.

We even swam with two sea lions, even though they were quite far away.

We found another stingray, which was gone quickly however once it started to float away.

There were little lovely fish of different colours, however not so many as I had gotten to see on the Caribbean side.

I did see a parrot fish though, a lovely turquoise male, and how it behaved around a school of fish.

The water was a lot cooler than yesterday, and so I was glad for the wet suit, even though having the water form its way into the wet suit was something I had to become used to.

We then headed on full force to a nearby beach, where we anchored and had lunch. We had a boxed lunch with rice with prawns and broccoli and potato and carrots. Yummy, and exactly the thing to warm us back up and give us new energy.

We then hopped off at the island (yes, wet landing), and walked around, or just sat in the sand. It was actually to cold and cloudy to go tanning, and so we just huddled up and chatted.

There were however some small hermit crabs, and a couple of sea lions relaxing on the sand.

We got back on the boat and while we were heading back to Isla San Cristobal, we saw large manta ray fins poke out of the water, where they were eating along the stones. These animals are surprisingly large!

We even got to see more dolphins that decided it would be fun to swim along our boat.

Back on the island we visited the interpretation centre.

It is the centre where you can get most of the information on the Galapagos Islands, pretty much like a museum.

You could get to know everything about the plate movement and the formation of the Galapagos islands, as well as information on the currents surrounding the islands (for example the Humboldt current bringing in cold water but new species), the different climates you can find on the islands and how different species are said to have evolved on the different islands.

For example it is though that the Darwin finches all stem from one time of finch, and that they have adapted to the food options on the island, ranging from ants, to little berries, to little leaves or even butterflies. (Their size and beak have altered accordingly).

Furthermore we could read about the history of the settlement of people on the Galapagos, including whalers, cannoneers, some Nordic settlers wanting to build a fish canning fabrication point, and others seeking wealth by producing oil from turtles and whales and thinking that the Galapagos Islands were a good place to start agriculture.

They also had a part about the future of the island. There was an interesting picture of different islands and settlements back in the days and today, where you can see how the amount of housing on these islands has changed tremendously.

I headed back to the hotel to take a shower and get ready for dinner. Again we met up on the balcony for some pre dinner drinks – someone had to drink the 3 bottle of Abuelo rum we took with us…

We then headed out for dinner, realised that our recommendation was closed and went back to the same restaurant as the night before. Not having pre-ordered meant that we had to wait about 1,5 hours to get our food. A very long time when you are hungry!

I had some ceviche, which was great, fresh and yummy.

After dinner, back to the hotel and off to bed.