Our trip through the Galapagos on the La Pinta was rapidly coming to a close, but we had one more afternoon of adventures.
While we were having lunch, the crew moved the ship from Post Office Bay, the location of the morning's activities, to Champion Islet, the location of our next activity.
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| Northern coast of Floreana Island with our gps trrack for Day 6. |
Champion Islet is a very small island off the northern coast of Floreana Island. It is known for being one of the most beautiful places in Galapagos to snorkel. That would be the main activity for the afternoon. Most people went snorkeling and we took the glass bottom boat.
We started at the southwest corner of the island and worked northward along the western coast,
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| Topo map of Champion Islet with gps track |
We almost immediately encountered two sea lions having some kind of disagreement.
Birds. We also began to see some new for us birds. Champion Islet is known for its interesting birds, and we spotted several.
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| Swallow-tailed gull |
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| Juvenile swallow-tailed gull |
We saw several swallow-tailed gulls. They have enormous eyes. apparently because they are nocturnal. In fact, they are the only gull in the world that is nocturnal. They feed far out at sea using their large eyes to spot squid and fish rising to the surface in the dark.
Another new bird was a Red-billed Tropicbird, although it was sitting back in the rocks so we couldn't get a good look at it.
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| Red-billed Tropicbird |
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| Blue-footed Booby on the rocks |
Home of the last surviving Floreana Mockingbirds. The one bird we did not see was a mockingbird. Champion Islet and nearby Gardner Islet are home to the last remaining Floreana Mockingbirds. This species of mockingbird has been extinct for decades on Floreana Island, victims of introduced species. Apparently some of the birds were able to make it to these nearby islands where there are no introduced species and thus they have survived Unfortunately there are reportedly only 20-40 Floreana Mockingbirds on Champion and 50-70 on Gardner. To protect the birds, visitors are not allowed on the island.
Since we were in the glass bottom boat we kept watching for fish or other things under the water. I think from the yellow tail, the fish below is a Razor Surgeonfish, but I am not sure. We saw very little else.
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| Razor Surgeonfish |
Once we turned around and started to head south, we did see lots of snorkelers.
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| Snorkelers along the northwest corner of Champion Islet with La Pinta in the background and Floreana Island in the distance |
At that point we headed back to the ship and the snorkelers were not too far behind. Once everyone was on board the ship moved again for one more adventure, a hike at Cormorant Point.
Cormorant Point. Cormorant Point is a volcanic cinder cone connected to Floreana Island by a narrow isthmus. Below is a topo map showing the trail that crosses the isthmus.
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| Trail at Cormorant Point with elevation changes (out and back) shown in red below |
Based on the guides' comments ahead of time, we decided not to go on this hike. However I did want to include a couple of things here anyway.
A Trail of Two Beaches. The trail connects two beaches and goes along the side of a lagoon. Both beaches can be seen in the aerial photo below.
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| Aerial photo of trail across isthmus at Cormorant Point. Green beach is on the west side. The white "Flour Beach" is on the east side. |
The beach on the west side, the location of a wet landing, is the green olivine beach that I had seen mentioned numerous times prior to our trip when researching the earthcache at Post Office Bay. As mentioned in the previous post, olivine weathers rapidly and hence loses its color. Since the beach here at Cormorant Point is so much closer to a volcanic cone, the source of more olivine for the beach, I wondered if it was a darker green that the beach at Post Office Bay. Anyone that went on the hike wish to comment?
The beach on the east side is totally different. This beach consists of very fine white sand formed by the erosion of coral skeletons. The sand is so soft the beach is known as Flour Beach.
Flour Beach is one of the primary nesting locations in the Galapagos for Galapagos Green Sea Turtles. Baby sea turtles emerging from the nest to make their run to the sea normally do so at night to avoid predators. However while the group was there, one of the tiny little creatures made his run for the water.
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| Baby Green Sea Turtle photo from Wikipedia, but I suspect the one on Flour Beach looked similar (By Manuel Heinrich Emha - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=940831) |
As told to us at dinner later that night, everyone obeyed the national park rule of staying six feet away, but they created a phalanx of protectors to ward off any would be predators. A cheer went up when the little guy finally made it to the water. That is the first, and perhaps one of the biggest, hurdles he faces in his fight to make it to adulthood. If this little one survives he will reach maturity at 25+ years and then hopefully be back here some day. Sea turtles migrate over vast distances but return to their birth beach to lay eggs, if female, or look for a mate, if male. Rather than think about the high mortality rate of green sea turtles in a negative way I liked this quote:
Picture baby hatchlings running down the sand to the ocean in their first breaths of freedom. This is nature in its purest form, the fight for survival. The reward for the lucky few is an 80 happy turtle year lifetime in the rich Galapagos waters, and the occasional encounter with visiting humans.
An unexpected shark encounter. We were relaxing on the back deck before going inside for the final presentation from the guides and then dinner. It must have been no later than about 6 pm, although already very dark, when several people started shouting about sightings off the back of the ship. We got up to look and couldn't believe our eyes. There were sharks everywhere. The ship has some lights at the waterline which seem to attract fish. The fish in turn attract the sharks.
Although we never got pictures, we had seen a hammerhead shark on one of the panga rides and had also seen a whitetip reef shark swim under us on one of the glass bottom boat trips. However this was totally different. We easily counted 25 sharks on one corner of the stern and another 25 off the other corner. Assuming they were along the bow as well (we were at anchor and not moving) that meant at least 100 sharks and probably more. They were just quietly swimming around, no thrashing about that I saw. It was very dark and probably no picture would have been possible, but in retrospect I wish I would have at least tried because the sight was amazing.
That was quite the ending to the day. We then went to see the slide show of pictures that the guides had taken during the week and to enjoy our last dinner aboard. Before going to bed we took care of all the last minute packing details because tomorrow we would be disembarking directly from breakfast without even being able to go back to our cabin.
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| The final towel art courtesy of our wonderful cabin steward |
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