More checks on the bucket list

I stayed up a little later than usual last night to know when we crossed the equator. We have a seven year-old traveling on the boat, and he asked the naturalist yesterday exactly how wide is the equatorial line. Good question. I didn’t exactly see it last night, but I did take a screenshot when our latitude reached o.ooooo. That was nerdy fun. We sailed from Spring to Fall faster than you can say Charles Darwin.

We started the morning a couple degrees south of the equator, with a dinghy ride around Vicente Roca Point on the island of Isabella. Last night, one of the other passengers asked what else was on my list to see in the Galapagos. I told her I still wanted to see a flightless cormorant, as well as penguins and marine iguanas in the water. As the dinghy floated by the flightless cormorant, she gave me a thumbs up. We have cormorants at the park near our house in Denver. We often see them drying themselves by stretching out their wings and standing still. They have a fairly wide wingspan at about three feet. But this is the Galápagos, where everything is just a little different. The cormorants here have no predators, so there’s no need to fly. They just need to swim well to fish for their meals. Because their wings are basically useless, they are about a third of the size of a common cormorant’s wings. They look like they have chicken wings, and not very good ones. The feathers are thin, and the wings seem misplaced. They seem like the avian version of T-Rex. We saw boobies, brown noddies, pelicans, and frigates. As we passed by the shore, we saw some marine iguanas sunning themselves on the black lava rocks. Although the iguanas can stay in the water for up to 45 minutes, they get chilled pretty quickly because they are cold blooded reptiles. As a result, they stretch themselves out on the warm black lava rocks, allowing the sun to increase their body temperature. The ones we saw were scaling rocks that were almost vertical as they exited the water.

Our morning snorkel was terrific. There were endless sea turtles, but the highlight for me was penguins. We were in the water just a few minutes, when we discovered two Galápagos penguins standing on a rock. I snapped a few photos, assuming they had just gotten out of the water, but I had their timing wrong. I waited a couple extra minutes and one of them waddled toward the edge of the rock. I started the video and captured the bird as it entered the water and swam away like it had been shot out of a canon. Later, I was so enthralled with watching one of the turtles trying to eat in the surging water that I apparently missed an octopus, but I was still happy to have hung out with the turtles.

We snorkeled again, after lunch, with the aim of finding marine iguanas. It wasn’t hard. As soon as we got near the site, you could see prehistoric heads sticking out of the water all over the place. Just off of Fernandina island, we found hundreds of iguanas on the rocks and in the water. The explanation of how they got to the Galápagos is fantastical. The theory goes like this. Unsuspecting iguanas on the mainland of South America were hanging out but didn’t realize that they were standing on a raft made of twigs and leaves and other debris. While they weren’t paying attention, they floated out to sea and eventually landed in the Galápagos. But wait, it gets more bizarre. These iguanas were used to chewing on leaves and what not, but there is very little vegetation to munch on here, so they decided to dive in the ocean and eat seaweed and moss. Of course, this diet is very high in sodium, so enter Darwin. These iguanas developed a special gland in their head that removes the excess salt, which they sneeze through their nose. Basically, they have an internal desalination plant. After hearing all that, it seems just as a likely to me that aliens plopped them down here and wished them good luck with the tourists.

The iguanas are kind cute in a little Godzilla kinda way. They look like the famous terror of Japan but swim like an accomplished alligator. Their tails are long and flat, which can propel them fairly quickly through the water. I watched several of them gripping the rocks underwater and chomping on the moss. They have rounded faces, since the pointy faces of regular iguanas would make it difficult to pick moss off of rocks in the sea. When I would put my head up out of the water, I could several Godzilla heads floating at the surface, swimming to or from the shore. There were a number of turtles also enjoying the moss, but they seemed secondary to the strange site of iguanas swimming underwater.

Our last stop for the day was Espinosa Point on Fernandina island. There are so many marine iguanas at this location that you literally had to make sure you didn’t step on one. Because they are dark in color, it was easy to overlook them, assuming you were seeing lava rock, not a reptile. As Gustavo explained about the iguanas, there would be a sneeze, and salt shooting through the air. The sneezing makes an audible noise, and the salt can travel two or three feet, depending on the trajectory. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of iguanas along the trail we walked. Just down the way from the iguanas were more baby sea lions. They were so cute! We also learned that the Galápagos sea lions don’t actually have a mating season. They will mate whenever they choose; however, the female can control when she births the pup. Thus, she will avoid the wet season, when the food supply is strained, waiting instead to birth in the dry season, when survival rates are as high as 97%.

Back on the boat, we had a little celebration with charades, dancing, and general merriment, as one of the passengers had a birthday today. It was a good time, and the captain gave us all an official certificate for sailing over the equator. At least we didn’t have to do it on a raft made of vegetation.Read more