It’s not actually the afternoon yet – it’s only 10:30am. But, we’re back on the boat, and Monica gave us a briefing about our first snorkeling adventure. This is the lounge where daily briefings are held.

The water in the Galápagos is cold! Jeff was able to see the temps on his watch, and it was usually 68-69 degrees. A few spots were warmer, though; it got up to 74 at one location! These temps meant full wetsuits were required.

Ok, no judging! Here is how crazy we looked in our wetsuits. Well, okay, Jeff looks good, I look like a crazy person with all my layers! We both wore our bathing suits, then rash guard pants and long sleeve tops, then 2.5-3mm wetsuit pants and tops, then I had a 2.5mm wetsuit vest. Oh, and wetsuit booties, plus I also wore gloves. Whew! We brought all of that gear with us, along with our snorkels, masks and Jeff’s fins! However, we didn’t have hoodies – so we used the ones provided by the boat. The hoodies aren’t very comfortable, but they sure made a huge difference in keeping us warmer.

OK! No laughing too hard! 🤣

This was what they called a “test snorkel”. Since the other passengers got their wetsuits and snorkel equipment from the boat, they wanted everyone to be able to test it out and feel comfortable.

Anyway, it wasn’t a very long snorkel, but we saw turtles, fish and a sea lion. A great shot of this turtle eating the green algae.

Next to his head are two fish, one of which is the Cortez Rainbow Wrasse. So colorful!

We saw these Mexican Hogfish quite frequently over our trip.

And….Swimming with our first sea lion!

And, another sea turtle. The colors are beautiful on this turtle.

After this short snorkel, we went back to the boat for lunch. We forgot to take pictures of the food thus far, but it was excellent. They did a great job of making interesting local dishes. For lunch and dinner, they always offered 3 different entrées to choose from, one of which was an excellent vegetarian choice. They also always had starters, a salad or vegetable dish and dessert. Whew! Three full meals a day, plus snacks and very nice hors d’oeuvres every evening before dinner time. Good thing we were getting a ton of exercise every day!

For lunch, we finally remembered to take a couple of pictures. On the left is the starter, a crab salad. Then dessert, which was a delicious passion fruit mousse topped with kiwi in a chocolate cup. Everything always looks so pretty!

We did try hard to take pictures of the food going forward!

After lunch, there was a siesta time. Then, around 4:30pm, we want ashore at Cormorant Point. This was a simple walk with some pretty views.

First, we landed on a dark, somewhat green-tinted beach. It turns out that the sand included many volcanic olivine crystals! They were very tiny, so we couldn’t really take a good picture. But, we could look through the sand and find the tiny green crystals. Pretty neat!

This is the path we took from the beach. That’s a cinder cone on the right.

We followed the trail across to a completely different beach. This one is known as “Flour Beach” for its white sand.

All over the beach, we found the holes for Ghost Crab burrows.

They leave tracks and balls of sand from their feeding. The balls of sand are what remain after they filter the sand looking for food. The patterns are really pretty – like art on the beach.

You can see each scrape to scoop up the sand, then the little ball they leave behind. Here’s a closeup…

This is not the crab making the above holes and art… this is the Galapagos version of the Sally Lightfoot Crab. They are all over the rocks and can be super colorful.

Amazingly, while we were on this beach, a beautiful rainbow was out. It was there for a long time, and we took a ton of pictures of it. Don’t worry, I’ll just post this one picture! It was amazingly colorful!

After the beach, we walked along a different path and saw these juvenile Blue Footed Boobies. First, we all saw this guy splatted on the sand. He looked like he was dead! But, he did move, whew! He was just sleeping on the ground. Blue Footed Boobies make their nests on the ground, so finding one sleeping there isn’t a big surprise.

But, about 10′ up, there was another youngster hanging out. Not sure if they were siblings. Or how the above bird ended up 10′ down? Hmmm… the above bird has more fluff than the one below. So who knows if they are siblings?

As we all stood there, the above youngster decided to do a lot of wing flapping to practice flying. This went on for quite a long time. Not sure how much longer until he/she can actually fly, but he sure was practicing a lot! As you can see, I am playing with iMovie. 😉

Finally, our trail took us along a brackish lagoon…

Surprise! Waaayyyy in the distance were a couple of flamingos! This crop of a zoomed-in picture isn’t great, but at least you can see them.

These are the American (aka Caribbean) Flamingo. Interestingly, the small population (a few hundred) in the Galápagos are smaller and genetically different than elsewhere. Huh, I wonder why they aren’t a different (sub-)species if they are genetically different?

The sun gave us a beautiful view over the water…

Finally, it was time for us to motor on back to the boat. Time for relaxing a bit and a wonderful dinner. Oops! no pictures of this dinner! 😉