Galápagos: Day 3

Today was spent on Floreana. We started the day at Cormorant Point to try to see some flamingos 🦩 in the nearby lagoon. While landing in the beach, two juvenile flamingos flew onto the shore, before we'd even got to the lagoon where they like to eat! Everybody was very excited since Yazmany had previously told us you don’t always see flamingos here (of course, nothing can be guaranteed). We knew they were young because they were not very pink and still white.

We made a short walk to the lagoon and saw a couple-dozen flamingos eating. The water was like a mirror, which looked really cool against the landscape and flamingos. After stopping at the lagoon we continued our walk towards Cormorant Point.

Once we reached it, we walked along the beach. As a group, in consultation with Yazmany, we decided we would snorkel here later instead of at Champion Island.

We returned to the boat and got changed for snorkeling. The dingy dropped us back off in the bay at Cormorant Point.

We saw a lot of things while snorkelling today! We saw many of the same fish as yesterday, and I learned that the purple and orange one I like is an angel fish. We also saw a fish that looked like Gill from Finding Nemo. There were also some aqua-colored fish that shimmered and they were very big. We saw a lot more starfish, some really big and skinny ones and some dark blue ones. They were pretty cool.

About halfway through our snorkel journey, we saw some (lots of) sharks floating on the bottom of the sea. They were just laying there and only one would occasionally move around on the bottom (which was luckily far enough away from the surface that I wasn't too scared).

There were a couple turtles, but visibility wasn't great so they were a little bit hard to see.

When we finally got out of the water I was feeling cold and tired, and then Yazmany told us we'd been snorkeling for over an hour, no wonder! Just like yesterday, we were late back so had to quickly rinse off before lunch.

For our appetizer, chef Daniel had set up a demonstration of some traditional Ecuadorian lunch foods. There was a salad with tomato and red onion with vinegar over a bed of lettuce, some baby sausages, an egg, and a tortilla with a peanut sauce (it was made with potato and spices, more like a fat potato pancake and not a traditional tortilla we think of). It was delicious and also just very nice to see the chef and thank him for the delicious food.

After our lunch it was time to get ready to kayak! We went to a bay nearby Cormorant Point that had lots of small rocky islands and mangroves. The kayaking was great!

We saw turtles poking their heads up for air all throughout the hour we were kayaking. We also saw some blue footed boobies and sea lions. On an island with lots of candelabra cactuses, there were three sea lions that came to play with us. They were all swimming under our kayak and then popping back up right next to us. It was fantastic; they are such playful creatures.

After we finished kayaking, we wrote some post cards to put into the barrel at Post Office Bay. It is an old barrel that's been used for 200 years, first by pirates. You go there, look through post cards to see if you can deliver any, and then put your own in. There are people who need postcards delivered to all corners of the world. We found a postcard for Edinburgh and one for Perth that we will take with us and deliver when we get home.

Allan wanted to post all of our wedding Thank You cards there. He thought it would be an interesting way to have them delivered, or at least he’d find it interesting if he received something that way. He also insisted it would be faster and more reliable than actually posting them since Royal Mail wouldn’t be involved in the delivery. It think the real reason was because it would be free!

Allan then started winding-up Johnson. It started off with Allan finding a card for Brisbane, where Johnson lived. Allan handed the card to Johnson, who gladly accepted. Allan then started handing any other post card for Australia to Johnson, who kept accepting them without fully reading the address! Allan just said, “Australia”, held out his hand towards Johnson and Johnson took the post card from him. It wasn’t until Johnson had about a dozen cards that he suddenly realised the reality of the situation - some of the addresses were thousands of miles apart. However, by this point, most people had at least one card they planned to deliver and Johnson was too polite (awkward?) to return any to the pile. He eventually snuck most of them back in, all to Allan’s amusement.

After we put our postcards into the barrel, we had a walk along the beach and then could relax for a bit while some people snorkeled for about 20 minutes. The sand was soft and you really sunk into it so it was kind of a workout to walk!

After we got back to the boat we had time to freshen up before our briefing for the next day and to say farewell to some of the guests. 7 out of 10 guests were ending their cruise the next morning, while we were continuing on with Johnson (what a funny guy!). Joëlla is lovely, so it's a shame she isn't continuing on.

The farewell cocktail was much like the welcome cocktail (probably the same). We said goodbye and thank you to the crew and discussed what we liked about the cruise. I hope the crew stays - I've gotten to know all their names!

Unfortunately, Yazmany is leaving the boat and a new guide named Pablo is coming on. I hope he's as good as Yazmany.

During dinner and afterwards we had great chat with Joëlla and Johnson. It's been nice to have a bit of a constant and not have to think about the planning of day-to-day. And also to dump our bags for a bit.

Tomorrow we go to Santa Cruz, which is the most populated island in the Galapagos.En savoir plus