Saturday 4 October, 2014

We explored both sides of Floreana Island today. So far the boat has been cruising at night and again at lunch time.  Post Office Bay is so named because since 1793, pirates, whalers and ships captains would leave their correspondence in the wooden barrel, hoping that the next person that came along might live near the addressee and take the letter to them! In 1913, Captain David Potter wanted to destroy the whaling fleet so he read the letters of the whalers which told him where the whalers we're going so he could ambush them. Today we wrote postcards and left them in the box, hoping someone who comes later will take the postcard and deliver it.  We then went through all the letters that had been left in the box to see if we could deliver any of them. Very few were to any addresses in Australia. Many of the letters said for pick up only, mening people left them hoping that person would one dy come to the Galápagos Islands and pick up the letter themselves. Great idea!

Thought I might show you the size of our room...very small as you can see. Jan and I have to go sideways to get into bed and the shower/toilet is the smallest I have ever seen. But all we have to do is sleep in it so we manage.

This morning we saw our first tortoise under water, very hard to take a photo because of the refraction of the water. We also saw a couple penguins...gee it is hard to take photos from a bouncing Zodiac (an inflatable dinghy that hold about 16 people plus the driver. We also saw a male frigate with a beautiful orange throat.

The beach at Comorant Point (the afternoon exploration) is a golden green because it is rich in olivine (aluminum, silica, magnesium and iron-a collection of volcanic crystals.) it is the nesting site of the Green Pacific Sea Turtle but sadly it wasn't nesting time and all we saw were the holes that previous turtles had dug.

We saw several of the Blue footed Boobies plunge like an arrow into the water to find some fish. They then sit on the water for a few moments before they take off again, fly around and head straight into the water! What a sight to see. Saw some flamingos but they were really too far away for good photos. There had been a population of 1500 but several years ago, they had so much rain that it changed the water and it no longer was as saline as it had been and the flamingos died. We also saw some more Blue footed Booby babies.