Fernandina and Isabella

My watch alarm woke us up for 5:45am today and we raced to the deck to take in the sunrise over Fernandina and Isabella, the youngest and largest islands in the Galapagos respectively. It was amazing, on one side we had Fernandina and its large volcano capped with a really cool dome shaped cloud. On the other side was Isabella and four large volcanoes stretching off into the distance. You just knew it was going to be a good day.

A quick breakfast and it was off to the zodiacs to explore Fernandina. This island is the most pristine in the Galapagos because it has no water and was therefore of little interest to sailors and colonists. Lindblad has special permission to spend multiple days in the Fernandina and Isabella region on its expeditions. There’s only a small portion of the island that tourists are allowed to visit and we had a dry landing in some mangroves. We hiked out onto the lava flows and immediately encountered marine iguanas, lots and lots of marine iguanas. Walking along the shoreline we were enthralled with the sight of dozens of Pacific green sea turtles bobbing in the shallow water, resting and feeding on algae. In amongst the turtles swam marine iguanas, heading out to feed in the cold waters.

I pretty much photographed marine iguanas of every size and shape in as many ways as I could think of. At one stage a marine iguana was heading towards me so I set up the 360 camera in the sand to capture it passing by. The camera fell over, but it worked out very well because the marine iguana was fascinated by this and came over to lick the lens a few times before crawling over the camera. As we moved further along the lava, we continued to see sea lions, sea turtles and marine iguanas.

I’d been looking forward to finding flightless cormorants and was thrilled to photograph a nest with a mother and two chicks. The male returned at one point with a gift of a tuft of seaweed. She seemed to like it which inspired me, I know exactly what to bring back for my wife now. It was awesome to see their beautiful blue eyes and watch the male stretch out its tiny, ineffectual wings to dry them. The original cormorants that made it to the island could fly, but with no predators and everything they needed off shore, they evolved small wings and larger, powerful feet to move through the water.

On our way back to our pick-up point, we encountered the Galapagos’ largest predator, the Galapagos hawk. We were able to take some pictures of a pair of them sitting in a tree before hopping back into the zodiacs. Fernandina is amazing!

We eat a lot on the ship and enjoyed another buffet lunch as the ship repositioned itself to the large rock wall of one of Isabella’s volcanoes, it was time to snorkel. Upon flipping backwards into the water, I was greeted by three Galapagos fur seals. They took a look and then split, they’re not as playful as the sea lions. It’s wild to see sea lions and fur seals in the same location, it occurs no where else as they tend to like different climates. It’s just another thing that makes the islands so unique. The water is cold, but that’s a good thing, it provides nutrients for a profusion of life. Beautiful colours of tropical fish are everywhere and I’m not exaggerating when I say I encountered 2-3 dozen sea turtles. At some points I’d be surrounded by 6-7 of them. I thought Cozumel was great with 4-5 on a dive, Galapagos puts this to shame. It wouldn’t be a Galapagos snorkel if you didn’t get to mess around with the sea lions. Today it was a pair of young ones and we dove and turned and somersaulted all around each other for a good little while. The are so playful and curious, I will miss them!

A quick change and back in the zodiacs for cruises to check out some volcanic features of the islands, we saw Nazca boobies and lots of blue-footed boobies. We had a blast as the blue-footed boobies aerial dive-bombed into the water all around the zodiac as they fed. At one point we watched fur seals wresting on the rocks while young sea lions played in the waters below. Again, this is a truly amazing place. We encountered a large sunfish (Mola) on the way back to the boat.

After our daily debriefing, we all headed to the bow for a wine tasting and to prepare to celebrate crossing the equator. Mark and I had special permission from the captain to climb the crows nest and photograph the crossing and sunset from there. We all watched for the green flash (something I thought was Pirates of the Caribbean BS, but it turns out there is some truth to it). I spotted a whale’s spray in the distance and it turned out to be a sperm whale. We were treated to sightings of Mars, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter as the sky darkened.

We headed in for a presentation from the naturalists and to hear about our day tomorrow. Supper was awesome as usual and those who could stay awake took in a presentation by a professor at MIT who talked about DNA and its role in evolution. It was pretty informative and ended in a one of a kind song he’d written about the subject. Tomorrow we’ll be exploring the coast of Isabella, it promises to be another incredible day!

Baby Watch: Negative