March 4: Floreana Island (also called Santa Maria Island)

What the brochure says:

During an early morning walk at Punta Cormorant, you’ll look for flamingos and shore birds at a
shallow lagoon, and continue across the point to a beach where sea turtles nest. Later, while at
Champion Islet, you’ll snorkel among sea lions in clear waters, and then spend time looking for
the endangered Charles mockingbird from our Zodiacs. We visit the famous Post Office Barrel
and include standup paddle boarding to this busy day.

Our experience:

Another 5:30am wake up call and 6am gathering for 0630 departure. Our morning walk is at Punta Cormarant on Floreana Island also called Santa Maria island. Historical note: All the islands in the Galapagos Archipelago have multiple names. Many of the names were changed by the Spanish explorers, whalers, and pirates that visited the islands. It can be difficult to follow which island goes by which name(s), so we may have some inconsistencies as we go here!)

We came ashore via zodiac and I changed to tennis shoes for the mile and a half hike. We saw flamingos, blue-footed boobies, lava lizards, red crabs, and sea lions.

Paul had forgotten to put on bug spray, and got attacked by bugs. All this in about an hour, right through the rash guard he was wearing. The final count was 33 bug bites in about 90 minutes. Come to find out later, because his rash guard is basically black and gray/white, the bugs are attracted to the dark color. Live and learn, I guess...

We came back for breakfast. Some folks went on a glass-bottom boat tour, We went snorkeling.

Today was even better than yesterday. We saw a turtle, several white-tipped sharks, a couple of sea lion pups playing in the surf, and tons of fish.

Paul gave up his yellow life jacket and just used a wetsuit. They make you buoyant by themselves, so you don't really need a life jacket. It was really cool!

Today we had a Mexican fiesta for lunch with free margaritas! (More like margarita shots...)

After lunch we went to watch the kayaking video showing how to get in and out of the kayak from the zodiac. They are not allowed to beach the zodiacs or kayaks anywhere. We got Paul a buff from the store so we can hopefully keep his head from getting burnt. Too late! He's already got some sun! Then we had to get a different life jacket for kayaking and rode the zodiacs out and transferred to kayaks. We got to see a wonderful world of crabs, sea turtles in the water, and boobies.

After kayaking we went to 'the whalers post office'. It's a beat up little place started in 1793. People drop off postcards when they visit and a future visitor is supposed to hand deliver it to you when they go home.

 It's a very short walk from the post office back to the beach.

We transferred back to the boat by zodiac and took our third shower of the day.

Finally able to rest and then I went to see the drinks of the day. Both very good!

Tonight's lecture was about beaches. The first beaches to form are black as the volcanic rocks decompose. As the decomposing sand rusts the back becomes red from the high iron content. And as the parrot fish eat the coral and old shells get broken up  by the surf, the sand becomes white. The greenish colored sand comes from peridot crystals.

One of the naturalists talked about flamingos. The cruise director talked about the social responsibility of Lindblad and National Geographic tours.