Floreana Island, Part 1: Post Office Bay

Our last day was so packed, we’re going to divide it into two posts. After sailing all night, we arrived at Floreana. This island is more about human history than natural history (although we did have a greeting party of sea lions and marine iguanas as we arrived at the beach).

In the 16th century, pirates used the lava caves on the island to hide from the Spanish Armada; Charles Darwin stopped by on the HMS Beagle in 1835; and a strange series of events in the 1930s involved possible German spy activity and mysterious deaths and disappearances. We had earlier watched a film available from the library about it: “The Galapagos Affair: When Satan Came to Eden.” (Summarized well in https://lithub.com/murder-in-paradise-the-tale-…)

Our group came to this part of the island to help out with the stampless “post office.” There has been a barrel (with a hinged door!) near the beach since the 1800s where whalers and naval personnel would leave mail. When passing ships stopped on their way back to their home port, they would pick up all the letters destined for their home area and deliver them. Nowadays, it is the Galápagos visitors who drop off and deliver mail. We left postcards (one to Erin & Nick, one to Ryan, Eliana and Rory) which will hopefully get picked up by future tourists who live in your areas, and be hand-delivered to you.

Our guides insisted that any postcards we pick up to deliver must be hand-delivered so we can tell the tale of how they got there. We picked up 2 postcards for Santa Cruz recipients and 2 for people who live in Darryl’s old neighborhood in Altadena! We’ll make it a mission to get the mail delivered sometime! Fun idea, right?

We were able to take a short hike up to a viewpoint over the bay. Later on, we jumped out of the panga to snorkel along a cliff, where there were lots of sea lions resting in the nooks above and swimming with us below the water. We also saw a couple of sting rays (from a distance), reef sharks and the highest concentration of reef fish yet. Leaving the area, our panga driver got us close to a large flock of flamingos on the beach —spectacular!Read more