Genovesa Island

After a 7am breakfast we landed on Genovesa Island and wandered (extremely slowly!) around the trail. We saw red footed boobies, nazca boobies, different types of finches and tons of white fluffy chicks, plus a few small stingrays.

Then some of us snorkelled from the beach which was pretty wavy and there wasn't much to see apart from the odd fish. I did see a reef shark for a short time but it was rubbish viz. We saw a frigate bird with his red pouch puffed out flying around.

Most of us passed out asleep on the top deck in the sun, then had lunch.

Then we went snorkelling in a different spot around the edge of the old volcano crater which the boat is moored in. It was a wall dive but the viz was terrible more than a few metres from the cliff. I saw some large parrot fish and a fair few other fish plus a seal / sea lion that swam away, but it was disappointing. We were looking for hammerheads and reef sharks...near the end of the dive Anna free dived down and came face to face with a hammerhead and came up shrieking in shock. John also saw it from further away but the rest of us missed it :(

After a quick shower we were back on the boats and had a wet trip against the waves back to the cliffs and saw fur seals and birds (and a turtle on the way). We walked up Prince Phillip's steps up the cliff side and then followed the lava rock path through a forest of what looked like dead trees but were actually alive. We saw more of the same birds, which didn't really interest me. We were also looking for a special owl but never found it. I was cold, tired, bored of walking so slowly and fighting the snuffles of a cold so I didn't enjoy it as much as I should have. Emma later agreed she wasn't impressed by this day either.

We were BOB by 6:30pm and had our briefing for the next day before dinner. We set sail at 8pm and most of us headed up to the top deck to look at the stars. I saw another shooting star and the gulls were back. It was more choppy than last night and the guys lying in the deck chairs went sliding across the deck very fast several times. After a while the captain said we had to come down as we were making the boat top heavy so after a swaying shower we went to bed early.Read more