Monday 11th April

The Galapagos Islands were declared a national park in 1959. Organised tourism began in the 1960's and by the 1990's some 60,000 people visited annually. Today over 180,000 people visit each year.

Up at 6.30 absolutely shattered, breakfast at 7 then onto Floreana Island; The 6th largest island where several dozen people live. After the departure of Patrick Watkins, the first known resident in all the archipelago, Floreana was turned into a penal colony. Then in 1930's three groups of German settlers arrived and strange stories have been told about them ever since. The most colourful of the settlers was a baroness who arrived with 3 lovers. Another settler; Dr Friedrich Ritter, an eccentric who had all his teeth removed before arriving to avoid having dental problems was accompanied by his mistress. The third group was a young couple from Cologne, the Wittmers. There was a great deal of friction among the groups and one by one the settlers died unde mysterious circumstances; the only ones to survive were the Wittmers.

Punta Cormorant is a greenish beach (green because it contains crystals of the mineral olivine)
It was pouring with rain the whole time we were there! We did a 400m trail where we saw flamingoes in a lagoon (they are not galapagos flamingoes - they migrate here) we then saw the tracks of sea turtles that had laid their eggs the night before (they lay their eggs between 8-9pm due to the temperature.)

Back onto the boat and sailed to Islote Champion to snorkel (I was sh*tting myself not being able to swim!) I had a life jacket on and a lady from our group stayed with me. It was amazing we saw loads of fish and a white tip shark! Our guide was stung on his face by a jellyfish though! 

We then got back in the boat for lunch and to sail to post office bay; A barrel used to be here where whalers left mail. The site continues to be used, but obviously the barrel has been changed; here you leave a post card and someone from your hometown has to collect and hand deliver it, so we went to the post box to see if there was anything for us (highly unlikely) and there wasn't! But the post cards in the box only went as far back as April 1st 2011!! We then went into a cave where the Wittmers lived.

We then had some time on the beach to snorkel but the sea was too murky to see anything so we headed back onto the boat, showered (the worst shower ever - a trickle of water!) then had dinner, it was one of our groups birthday (50th!) so the dining area had been decorated and the chef had made an amazing cake! 

After dinner we had our briefing then sat chatting for a while before heading to bed.

The boat set sail at 8.30pm tonight and it was pretty rough! Almost impossible to sleep, we did eventually fall asleep when the boat anchored at about 4am but had to get up at 6!