Day 10 - Mon May 28, 2007 – Genovesa (“Tower”) Island – Bob: 123, Kathy: 269
Today our boat, the Flamingo,
was
parked inside the caldera of an ancient volcano.
This
is known as Genovesa Island.
We
had two nature walks: The first was a walk around a beach area. We
mostly just saw sea lions. They're lying all over the place and
they're absolutely unconcerned about humans. There was also an
occasional hermit crab.
When
we returned, we went snorkeling at that beach.
The second walk was just seeing and photographing a whole bunch of birds. If you like birds, this island is for you! They're everywhere!
The most amazing thing is that the animals have absolutely no fear. We took photos of each other just a foot and a half (a half meter) away from birds.
Besides
the sea lions, we saw sally light foot crabs, marine iguanas, swallow
tailed gulls, nazca boobies,
red-footed boobies, Darwin's finches, mockingbirds, Galapagos doves and others. There are so many birds here, you're practically tripping over them.
Some
birds were lying around catching some sun, which I had never seen
before.
There
were lots of baby birds on the island, and they are very ugly. Some
are so ugly they're cute, if you know what I mean.
The
baby birds are really big and the parents feed it by catching fish in
the ocean, then letting the baby stick its entire head inside the
mouth of the parent to retrieve the captured fish. It was kind of
disturbing to see.
The
baby birds were cute when they imitated the parents
This
is the only island, we were told, where we could see red footed
boobies.
We also went snorkeling for a while too, from the beach. I was a little more comfortable this time, because I could swim to shore if I wanted.
In the evening, we had our usual nightly meeting to explain tomorrow's events, then we went up to the deck to watch the beautiful sunset.
I'm
tired, so I'm not going to write much.