After waking in the middle of the night to rain on our bed through the ceiling, we rose early in a storm to head to North Seymour, expecting a day out in the rain and cold. Fortunately it seemed to be localised over Puerto Ayora and once across the island at the Baltra Channel, we were back in the bright Galapagos sunshine, waiting for our boat to arrive.

Once it did arrive, what a boat! Compared to the little bench-seats-with-side-pannels-if-you're-lucky speedboats, this was a luxury yacht! Two decks, and indoor kitchen, lounge seats at the front of the back and pleasant music piped though out. Following a very pleasant journey on the boat we first arrived at the Playa Bachas, a protected beach and sea turtle breeding ground where we went for a snorkel with sharks and a multitude of fish before taking a stroll along the beach. Despite not seeing any sea turtles during the day, we did see turtle tracks above the tideline from where pregnant sea turtles had pulled themselves up the beach to lay their eggs. For an image think tiny tractor treads with a furrow in the middle from Mrs Turtle's shell.

Next on the day's agenda was lunch back aboard the boat, tuna steaks with rice and vegetables in a leek and butter sauce which was quite lovely (Jeremy had two tuna steaks, and Lisa lots of rice and veggies, grumble).

Finally, after a further 30ish minutes of boating, we arrived in North Seymour. North Seymour was more of a large rock jutting out of the sea than an island, with some low lying shrub trees and cacti hanging on to it. Also it was full of animals. Huge orange iguanas lounged on the ground around the cacti, sea lions, boobies and mariguanas sat around on basalt rocks near the shade, and frigate birds nested in the trees and shrubs. It was the frigate birds that drew us to visit the island in the first place. Picture an albatross, shrink it by 20%, add a forked tail, scoop bill, and most interestingly, a big red inflatable sack just below the bill which can be blown up to huge sizes in order to attract a mate. Although they looked quite pretty, they were quite despicable birds, as, having wings unsuitable for diving, they had to get food from other frigate birds feeding the young, or from other birds in the wing by flying up to high altitude and shaking them vigorously until they disgorged their stomachs! But they really were very pretty. Following a walk around the island we returned to the boat and had a lovely cruise back to Santa Cruz before bussing back to Puerto Ayora, where it was still raining!

Once we returned, we had a fairly disappointing restaurant salad for dinner and called it a night.