We have so many photos that it’s just easier to split daily posts up into multiple posts.

We kicked off our day at Española Island, which is the southernmost island of the Galápagos archipelago. Interestingly, the island went through a couple of previous names. First named King Charles Island by a pirate in 1684, it was then renamed Hood Island in 1793. The island was eventually named Española Island.

Our first stop was at Suarez Point. It’s a great island to see the colorful “Christmas Iguanas”. Male marine iguanas change color during the breeding season. This subspecies found on Española changes to the cheery green and red colors of Christmas! Wondering how colorful they are? Here you go…

They are really cool looking with all those colors. Here is a close-up of his face with the texture visible.

Marine iguanas in the Galápagos are the only iguanas in the world that swim down in the water to eat algae off the rocks. Later in our trip, we’ll snorkel with some of them!

We saw a lot of these colorful guys here. As a matter of fact, they were all over the trail we needed to take. Yup, we had to step carefully around all these lounging iguanas!

Along the way, we saw a few Galápagos Mockingbirds. They are very active, so I’m surprised we got such a good picture of one.

The trail snaked through this scrubby undergrowth, and every so often, down a side “trail”, we’d see lounging sea lions. Surprisingly, some of these were pretty far away from the water.

In one area, we found the skeleton of a sea lion. Here, Monica is holding the skull. I think she said this was a young one.

Eventually, we ended up on a rocky beach that had a LOT of baby sea lions and some moms. Wow, so many cute little babies! This little one was a newborn…you could see the afterbirth nearby.

This one posed for a nice portrait…

Many of the babies were covered in sand…

Along the water, we also saw more of the marine iguanas. These guys were wet, so they must have been eating in the water fairly recently. After that trip into the very cold water, they need to spend the day lounging in the sun to heat up again.

We walked along to another area, and as usual, saw a good number of Lava Lizards. There are seven species of Lava Lizard found across the Galápagos. This male is very colorful!

I do like to show close-ups of these colorful guys to see all the texture…

While the male is colorful, the female is not…well, at least she has a red head!

Around the corner, we found a Galápagos Dove. We see them every so often, but they always have their heads down in the weeds, pecking for food. This was actually a good photo, considering most of the time his head was under those grasses!

The sea lions, including the babies, seem to sleep anywhere. Even places that don’t look very comfortable.

You can’t see it in this photo, but this Mom’s face is right where the water surges in. The baby was just happy to eat!

Now, time for some videos! FYI – They all have sound.

This one has the cute sounds of both the baby and mom talking to each other.

This is a crazy quick video. A baby wandered over to the wrong mom – and wow! She attacked the little thing. If you look behind mom where she looks at the end, you’ll see mom’s baby is there. I didn’t edit the sound on this video – it’s one of our fellow passengers reacting to the event! No worries, the baby was fine.

And, finally, I put together a compilation of a few scenes with some music for you to enjoy…

Wow! This first morning excursion isn’t over, and we have all these great photos!

Let’s move on to another post to divide up this day. There are still a lot of exciting things to come!