This morning I was woken at 4am by what I can only describe as an earth quake occurring in my room. In a daze, I soon remembered that I was on a boat, and that shaking and loud noise was the boat. I honestly thought that we had been sailing all night, and that they were dropping the anchor. I thought that my room must have been located near the anchor storage facility. However after a couple of minutes, the noise was still going, and I soon realised that we hadn't been sailing all night, no. That 'earthquake' was in fact the ships engine starting and motoring this huge ship towards our next destination. I put my fingers in my ears, and eventually went back to sleep.
I woke up this morning.... Again thinking gees it's light. I had set my alarm for 6am, just so I could have a shower before breakie. I looked at my watch.... 6.30am, great my alarm didn't go off. Then it dawned on me, Galápagos is one hour behind the mainland, however for what ever reason the ship still continued on mainland time. Now this would have been fine, if my iPhone hadn't been so efficient at automatically changing the time to Galápagos time. It worked out fine though, I jumped up and had the quickest of quick showers. I still had a few minutes to spare before our 7am breakfast!!!
After breakfast, the entire boat had to take part in a fire drill. We went through the motions, the alarm went off, so we all grabbed our life jackets from the ward robes in our cabins, and slowly made our way up to the top deck. We put our life jackets on, only to take them off again a couple of minutes later. The only bonus, we didn't have to walk far to get our snorkelling get and wetsuits.
It was crazy on the top deck, people trying on fins, grabbing masks and snorkels, and madly trying on wetsuits. A few of us Aussies explained to others that may not have had experience snorkelling, how to find the right size mask, and that they may need to put their wetsuit on the right way.... zip up at the back.
With all our equipment ready, it was then time for our morning excursion. The boobie group was first to disembark this morning. We boarded the zodiacs like pros, and made our way to Gardener Bay located on the island of Espanola. This morning was our first experience with wet landings. We all had our shoes off, and once we arrived at the island we all had to slide our legs off the side of the boat, landing in the water, and then walking up the beach. The first thing we saw... sea lions. I honestly think sea lions are now going to be a dime and a dozen. It's so funny, you see them for the first time and you are so amazed and taking lots of photos, however after you see your 4000th sea lion it's just like ho hum, another sealion.
We ended up walking along the beach this morning. I well and truly kept my distance from the sealions after last nights stealth attack!! But they all seemed fairly docile. Most of them were more interested in sunbaking, than in the group of humans walking by and photographing them!!!
We walked the distance of the beach, and came to this rocky area, where we found these beautiful red crabs. Their red colour really popped off the black volcanic rock of the island. Camouflaged on the rocks, were the aquatic iguanas. These iguanas were black in colour, with a slight tinge of red across their flank. They blend in so well with the black rocks, that occasionally the only way you knew that they were there was when you heard them snorting and spitting the salt out of their nose.
We also came across a number of different bird species as well!!! Once we had spent a bit of time down at the rocks, we did a u turn and returned back to the area where the boat had dropped us off. This is where we had left our snorkelling gear. We all got geared up, and then swam off the beach. For those who weren't so confident, they could just stay fairly close to the shore. For a few of us who were fairly strong swimmers, we could swim about 50m out to a huge rock. The swim out was against the tide... And definitely a lot harder work than swimming back to shore. But it was well worth it!! We got out near the rocks... and there were so many fish. We saw quite a few white tip sharks all nestled under a rock shelf. That was cool. We swam all the way around the big rock, and I had the absolute bejesus scared out of me by a sealion swimming past.
After about an hour, I swam back to shore. I put my life jacket on and jumped straight on to a zodiac. When in the zodiac, I always get the feeling that we are navy seals returning to our mother ship after a mission. Although, seeing us get out of the zodiac back on board the ship, we may not have the same finesse as what the navy seals do!!
Once we were back on board, our snorkel gear and our feet were pretty much hosed down, just so we don't carry anything from one island to the next.
All on board and accounted for, the boat set sail, whilst we all enjoyed a nice warm spa on the back of the boat.
I left just enough time for a shower before lunch.
After lunch we sat out on the deck chairs and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine. Every now and again we had a whale appear on the surface of the water, take a deep breath and then disappear again for awhile. We anchored just off Espanola island, and this was our next distination.
It got close to 3pm and it was almost time for our afternoon activities. So I went and prepared my back pack. It was then time to put on our life jackets and board those zodiacs again.
They took us back to the island, this time to Punta Suarez bay. It was a dry landing, which meant that we could just jump from the boat on to dry land... So no need to get our feet wet.
We walked along a made path for about 5m, navigating our way in between sealions, crabs and marine iguanas. They were everywhere. We made it on to the beach, where we spent a little time looking at the animals there.
We then started to walk inland, across sharp jagged volcanic rocks. The land again was so barren, and arid in appearance. The continual landscape of black rock obviously contributed to this arid look, as did the fact that the plants just looked like twigs sticking out of the ground. Very few of the trees contained any form of leaves or flowers. I imagine that this is what mars would look like.
As we walked we came across so many different types of birds. We saw boobies (including the blue footed boobie), albatrosses, Galápagos hawks. We were so lucky!! We even managed to see chicks of most of the birds that we saw as well!! They were so cute and fluffy. Although, they don't stay like that for long!!
We continued to hike across the rocks, doing our best to balance and not fall. We eventually made it to the other coast line. Here the waves were crushing the coastline, smashing into the rocks at such great force, it created a blow hole effect. At times the water sprayed at least 10-15m up in the sky, and with the wind blowing up occasionally it covered us in a very fine mist of sea water. The rocks around the blow hole were filled with varying types of birds, proudly showing off or preening their young, others performing their mating dances, showing off for the females!!
The time soon came when it was time to leave. We walked back to the pier, however we had to wait for a zodiac to return from the boat. Eventually one appeared ready for us to board. The only problem was, in order to get to the zodiac, I had to walk past some sealions who were lazily lying on the pathway leading to the pier. After what happened last night, this completely freaked me out... I didn't think that I would be able to get past. I just took a deep breath and slowly walked my way past... They didn't even lift their heads. Thank goodness.
Our zodiac took us back to the boat, and it was decided that the only thing we needed to do now was go to the poolside bar and enjoy a nice cold, well earned beer.... Or two!!
After dinner, we had our briefing on what the activities were for tomorrow, and then it was Latin night. This essentially just involved Latin music being played quite loudly, and some older women trying to Latin dance together, so that was my sign to retire for the night!!!
I just relaxed in my cabin for a while, and then it was time to watch the back of my eye lids.