The boat cruises over night from Santa Cruz to Espanola, leaving just before midnight and arriving just before 6 AM. We were supposed to start off the day with an early morning dive at 6AM. We are up by 5:30 and are ready to go by 6 AM, but we are informed that they had gone to the wrong spot and that we cannot dive here.
Dive #1: Bajo, Gardner Bay, Isla Espanola: Over breakfast the boat moves to the proper spot - namely, Gardner Bay, another beach on the same island. After breakfast we get ready for our dive and jump into the dingy. This is Jacqui's first cold water dive (and Lars' first since Sydney in the early 1990's). It is cold, but it is well worth it. On this dive at a dive site called Bajo we see a flight of 20+ spotted eagle rays cruise by us. They were like a bomber formation flying through the sky - but much more graceful. They swerved around us and disappeared into the distance. But we were lucky, we would see them not only once more, but twice on the dive. One time, the big male leader, with a wing span of over 2 meters, cruised around in a big circle and came right by us, as if to check us out.
We also saw two separate sting rays, one digging in the sandy bottom for food. He was surrounded by smaller fish looking for some scraps. Towards the end of the dive a large school of very large Jacks cruise in and they circled us twice very close by (within a meter) and then swam off in formation. We surfaced and we were shivering. Jacqui had a headache and we quickly went to our cabin and had a warm shower to take the chill out of our bones.
After getting warmed up (Jacqui had three cups of hot tea), we joined the rest of the group on the beach at Gardner Bay. We have the beach to ourselves and we enjoy the solitude. It is one of many beautiful beaches we will explore on this trip. There are sea lions laying everywhere and we can get quite close to them. They do not seem to mind.
We could identify about three territories that dominant males had staked out. They were patrolling their section of the beach by cruising up and down in the water just off the beach and constantly barking. They would try to fight off any intruders that were trying to steal away their harem of female sea lions.
We also find lots of marine iguanas hanging out on the rocks around the beach. They were sunning themselves. Again, we could walk up quite close to them to check them out. They have a unique red coloring on their body that no other iguana's in the world have. No one is quite sure why they have this coloring - maybe from the seaweed that they eat. Unlike other iguanas, they can swim and stay under water for over one hour (Darwin tested this out by attaching weights to them and throwing them in the water for increasing amounts of time to see how long they could survive - not sure if we would use this method today, but it was effective for him).
They have hundreds of Sally lightfoot crabs sunning themselves on the rocks - they are a bright red color. There are also a number of birds and we are still getting used to how they let you come so close to them. Just before lunch we return to the boat.
Over lunch the boat cruises to our next destination while we work on our dive logbooks. We arrive at Punta Suarez (where we had gone to at first this morning) and take a nap before we explore this part of the island. We head to shore just before 3 PM and take a walking tour of the area. We see so much and we will describe what we saw not in order, but by the different types of species that we encountered.
Sea Lions: The first thing we see are sea lions everywhere, including a large male on the landing platform. We have to chase him away before we can land. Just at the beginning of the walk we get a briefing on the sea lions. During the middle of this talk, the dominant male who was guarding his harem noticed that there was a male intruder laying in among his women. He "raced" up the beach (for a sea lion, is waddle was quite fast) barking and chased the intruder right through our group - we quickly got out of the way. There was a short fight with some biting, and the intruder gave up and slunk away - he will for sure keep on trying and will most likely succeed one day.
Marine Iguanas: Their red coloring is amazing - not sure what it does or why they are colored, but they certainly do stand out. They will go and swim and eat the algae and seaweed under water. No other iguanas do this - the original settlers from this species must have had to adapt as there may have been no other food for them to survive on. At one point, there were dozens of them laying all over the rocks. We had to make a detour on our walk at one point as it the iguanas had dug up the trail and the area around it to bury their eggs.
Blue-footed Boobies: The birds that we found in Galapagos are amazing. They have no fear of man and just stand or sit near the trail and do not mind as we walk by and look at them. Often we had to be careful as we walked so that we would not step on them by accident. The first thing we saw were two males going through the courtship ritual competing for the same female - we took bets on who would win. The loser slunk away. The females have large pupils, whereas the males have small ones.
The were laying all over the path, exhibiting all types of behavior. In addition to the courtship ritual, we observed them sleeping, just hanging out, building nests (just really circles in the dirt), sitting on eggs and tending to their chicks.
We saw one mother with a 3-4 week old chick.
Masked Boobies: Similar to the blue foots, they were all over the place. Saw much of the same behavior. They also lay two eggs, but when they hatch if both survive, one of them will be eliminated. The parents will only raise one chick at a time. Harsh, but I guess it improves the chances for the one chick.
Galapagos Hawk: While we were hanging out watching the boobies, a Galapagos hawk swooped in and landed on a bush just meters away from us. It was amazing how close they would come to us (we remember on our Trans-Africa how difficult it was to take a picture of the birds as we could never get very close - here they just fly right up to you). We would see this hawk once again soon as we carried on walking. We had a number of hooded mockingbirds that were following us around and it turned out that they were begging for water (it is very dry on the islands and they have learned that tourists carry water - another sign of how we humans alter animal behavior). While we were distracting the mockingbirds, the hawk came swooping down and flew right over us, just right above Jacqui's head - he must have been trying to get one of the small birds. He then landed on a rock near us and seemed to be waiting for a second chance.
Galapagos Albatross: We came upon a baby albatross just hanging out by the side of the path - the parents must be off looking for food. He was old enough to be able to be left alone. Later on, just before we finished our walk, we came upon to adult albatrosses in the middle of a courtship ritual. The were facing each other and going through a type of dance with song. They would make clicking sounds and tap their beaks together, occasionally looking up and opening their beaks wide. They were very well coordinated with their sounds and movements. It seemed they were about to become an item - albatrosses are monogamous and they will mate for life. Usually coming back this spot on this island - how romantic. We saw quite a few flying in the sky, but none landing or taking off. While they are elegant in the sky, when they land or take off they are so heavy and their wings are designed for cruising, that they have to jump off the cliff edge to take off. When they land they sort of stumble and awkwardly come to a halt.
We sat on a cliff edge for a while to observe the blow hole. When a large enough wave came it, the water would be shot 20 meters in the air, causing a huge plume of water to be spread over the area. In between bursts, we would watch the birds. Jacqui sat right next to one, who also seemed to be enjoying the spectacle of the blow hole. They would swoop over the cliff and occasionally one would make a dive bombing run and shot straight down into the ocean to catch a fish. We never got bored watching this birds doing these bombing runs - they would shot in at such high speed.
We headed back down to the beach and the pangas came and picked us up and took us back to the boat. We came aboard around 5:30 PM and took the time to relax and wash up. We had a drink before dinner and then enjoyed another good meal. We retired to our cabin early. The boat moves once again that night.