We all love Boobies - Galapagos III

We sailed again through the night and landed at a spot where Darwin had done so some years earlier. There was a habit of leaving the ships mark here and the earliest we saw was 1836. Darwin arrived at this spot in 1835 but he didn't appear to leave his physical mark. The authorities have now outlawed any more.

Up from these scratchings and the steps carved in to the rock we walked up the small crater, seeing Darwin Finches etc

I know what you are thinking............wild life photography at its best!

.....along the way to the salt water pool that Darwin's crew mistook for the fresh water one (from previous ships visits). At this point they thought they were dead. It took the calm head of  Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle to tell them they had got the wrong pool and go back and find the right one. 

We went by dingy up the coast and saw Boobies, Penguins, Flightless Cormorants, Pelicans, Frigates, Petrel's (little brown & white birds that run across the water), Iguanas and all sort of crabs and sea dwellers.

How about this - a few Penguins, Pelican and a Boobie all in one picture. Everyone loves the Boobies, their feet are such a great colour and they have an adorable soppy nature about them. There is one Island where they have red feet but we didn't get there, anyway I prefer blue.


This is a picture I got from the web, it is a better picture than I achieved.

The snorkeling was scheduled for the deep blue  & cold water. As it wasn't sunny all but two Aussies decided not to go preferring to rest or read on the sun deck. Luckily they didn't see anything new or we would have all been fed up!

As you will no doubt have gathered by now, I have loads of pictures - most of them rubbish but here are some of the better animal pictures, in no particular order:

This gives you an idea of how big the Iguanas get (about 4 or 5 feet long). Another bit of fun the Sea lions have is surfing. There are some decent waves here so the Sea lions catch a wave and come shooting in to the beach, turn around and do it again. They don't even need the surfer dude clothes or have to carry a board under their flipper.

Because the eat the seaweed at the waters edge they build up an excess of salt. They get rid of it in their Snot which they sneeze out at regular intervals. When you get a group of them is is like they have all got flu with Snot flying everywhere.

This is just to prove that they really do swim.

Here are the Flightless Cormorants. They don't look much on land but you should see them "fly" under water!

Neither this bloody great snail (about 12 inches long) or the crabs were on the menu.



We sailed up the channel through which blue whales migrate. It is the right time of year but we didn't see any, but we did have a great flying display by the bad boys of the bird world  - Frigate Birds.

They don't catch their own fish they prefer to "mug" others by attacking them, tipping them off balance by flipping their targets tails with their beak so that they lose balance and drop the fish. They are pretty aggressive with each other too!

They are incredible fliers and we got front row seats as they had a "dog fight" in the up draught created by the boat.. You can see how close they got! This is a male with the big red throat that it can puff up .






Another picture from the web to show what i mean..

On the last days sail we crossed the equator and the Captain called us to the bridge to see the "great" moment as the GPS read 0,00,00

I chose to take a photo of the others taking a photo.

So that was pretty much it. A great place to visit and see all the strange animals and the volcanic landscape. I think 8 days would have been too much for me but if you are really in to your animals then it would not be enough. 5 ish days was just right for me.

What I have not really described is how seriously they are taking the protection of the Islands, the tortoises are in many breeding programs and they have hundreds to release back in to the wild (I also forgot to say that each volcano has it's own specific strain of tortoise).

There are several itineraries but I think you see pretty much the same things on most of them. You sail every night to the next location and it was always pretty rough so if you are not comfortable on lumpy seas or suffer from sea sickness I would think twice before booking. You can stay on shore but you would still need to take day charters (of which there are plenty) to see the wildlife.

And as I said earlier, the advertised prices for these trips is pretty expensive. If you can, give yourself enough time to be flexible and take a last minute booking - the people I used were excellent (I paid less than half the advertised price). Drop me a line if you are thinking of going and I will try to help with advice etc.

Oh go on then, just one more picture of Boobies.................
 
 You thought I was going to do this didn't you?