Today, we are heading to Floreana Island. We’ll stop at a couple of different locations. First, we’ll stop at Bahia del Correo (Post Office Bay), marked with a red circle at the top of the map. Then, we’ll move along to Punta Cormorant (Cormorant Point).

Today, Roger piloted us over to the beach. For our two-week trip, we had Roger and David as our wonderful pilots. They truly did a great job getting us safely where we needed to go. And, when there were things to see, they piloted the pangas in a way that let everyone onboard get a good view – and pictures, too. Usually, they had their faces covered to protect from the strong equatorial sun. This is one of the few times we saw Roger’s face!

In Spanish, the small dinghy boat we used to get ashore is called a panga. I’ll probably use both names as I write this blog. So, you’ll need to remember what panga means! You can see the panga against the side of The Grace, waiting for other passengers to load up.

This was a “wet landing” – which means we need to wade in the water to get ashore. We thought we’d need our sandals in the water, but it was truly just beach sand underfoot. So we went barefoot, carrying our regular shoes in a dry bag to put on once ashore. Here are a couple of our fellow passengers wading in with Cornelia (guide).

This was an easy trail inland a bit to get to our destination. Here we are – covered to protect ourselves from the sun. It’s amazing that we were there for 2 weeks and I still look as pale as ever – thanks to sunscreen and coverups! Jeff also didn’t get any burns, but we all know he has more color than I do!

Those are not our boats in the distance. There were two other boats, both larger than ours. But we never saw the people from those boats here.

This is our destination – the original “post office” for the Galápagos! Way back in 1793, British whalers set up this barrel to send letters home via other passing ships. The idea was that sailors would drop addressed letters in the barrel, and future sailors would go through and find letters to their destination. Then, they would hand-deliver the letters. Wow, it must have taken a long time to get a letter with that system!

Nowadays, visitors drop addressed postcards into the barrel. Then, future visitors sort through and take any they can deliver. We found a good number of postcards addressed to folks in Colorado, so we took them home. It’s too far to hand-deliver those postcards from our house, so I wrote a note on each one and mailed them.

On our walk, we saw plenty of Galápagos Lava Lizards. Here is a beautiful male. As usual, the females look plainer.

We walked around the beach a bit, and saw our first Blue Footed Booby birds! As the name says, they have blue feet. There are two other types of Booby in the Galápagos – one has red feet and the other no special foot color. We’ll tell you about those later with pictures.

This is our ship in the background.

We also saw a Lava Heron, which is endemic to the Galápagos. This one just caught a small crab! It’s hard to see, but it’s in his beak. With their coloring, you can see why they are named after the color of lava.

After walking around, we motored around a bit in the panga on the way back to the boat. Here is a great picture of Cornelia…

We saw a number of sea lions lounging around in the sand, rocks and swimming. This expression on her face is just too funny…

It’s interesting to see how brown the sea lions look once their fur dries. When they first exit the water, they look black. This picture is also great because it shows how sea lions can walk using all four of their flippers. They just stand up and go, unlike seals, who have to drag themselves along.

Here is a very interesting type of cactus… commonly called “tree cactus” because they grow with trunks and look like trees. These are a type of prickly pear cactus, and there are multiple species endemic to the Galápagos.

Around the corner, we saw this marine iguana draped over a rock – he sure looks relaxed!

Jeff is enjoying the view from the panga….look at the colors of the water!

A Blue Footed Booby posed for his portrait…what crazy blue feet!

Over the entire trip, we saw SO many sea lions with their babies. The babies are just too cute! This is a great picture of mom nursing her young baby.

Unlike the females, the males have a large forehead – it looks like a bump. This guy was patrolling the water here, barking a lot.

Here is a video that includes the sound of the barking male and the calling of the little baby to her mom. I wanted you to be able to hear what that sounded like.

Finally, we are heading back to the boat. This is a great view showing how small our boat is compared to other boats we saw around the islands. The National Park Service restricts the size of boats so the largest carries a maximum of 100 people. We can’t imagine doing this trip with 100 passengers! What a terrible way to experience nature.

The NPS also restricts where and when boats can anchor and guests can come ashore (or snorkel). So, although we would see some other boats, we mostly didn’t run into their passengers. They schedule things very well, so that typically doesn’t happen. Or, at least, with our boat that didn’t happen!

Stay tuned – we still have a full afternoon to come!