Galapagos - Wow, double Wow!

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Geo: -1.3761, -89.6841

We motored for 4hrs overnight to Isla Espanola - in the south of the group and our guide's favourite island. It is low and has low vegetation. After breakfast we went ashore at Punta Suarez to walk around for a few hours, keeping mostly to a marked track.

The wildlife is so abundant we had to be careful not to step on a basking iguana, or a nesting boobie bird. No exaggeration! They are unafraid of humans - a mockingbird will hop between your legs, a sea lion pup waddled up to have a sniff of Robyn, iguanas just ignore you. As we came ashore we were greeted by hundreds of multi-coloured crabs, a sea lion and her pup born that morning, marine iguanas, lava lizards, and many varieties of birds, including albatross.

12 adult tortoises were left on the island in 1972, and no juveniles. Rats kept eating any young that were borne. So the 12 (10 females and 2 males) were taken off to another island and kept in an enclosure to breed and be protected. A third male of the same sub-species was introduced to improve the genetic diversity. In the last few years the rats have been eradicated and 1,500 tortoises have been returned to the island. A great success story, if you're not a rat!

In the afternoon we went ashore at Gardner Bay and snorkelled and watched a family of sea lions.

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Photos

Amazing colours
It's quite blue around its mouth parts, too. Shell width is about 100mm.

Marine Iguana
The iguanas have adapted to the cold of the ocean. First they sun themselves to get their body temp to the ideal 35deg. Then they enter the sea to eat algae, diving as deep as 12m and staying underwater for up to an hour at a time. When their body temp lowers, they regulate their heartbeat down as low as 6bpm and thus they can tolerate the cold. When they return to land, they have to lie in the sun or on warm rocks to raise their temp for digestion to occur. On Espanola Island there are no land iguanas, and their marine variety grow to a bit over 1m in total length. There are different subspecies on each island, something that fascinated Darwin on his 1835 visit.

Wildlife galore
Can you count over 20 iguanas in the foreground? (There's 27 heads, I think). Plus a juvenile pelican and a sea lion with pup.

Blue-footed Boobies
This chick is struggling to swallow a large fish just disgorged by its parent. In 40min it will need to be fed again. The camera is so close (a foot or two away) that the chick looks huge in comparison to the adult just behind it. These boobies are great fishers and studies show their dives are 85% successful - they get a fish 85 times from 100 dives. They dive as deep as 8m after fish.

Nazca Boobies
Pair with a newly-hatched chick. Boobies don't have a nest, they just lay their egg (or two) on the ground. Typically there's five days between eggs. Thus the older chick is much larger than its younger sibling and it gets all the food. The younger one usually dies unless there is something wrong with the first one, and then the parents feed the second chick. The Galapagos has Nazca, Blue-footed and Red-footed Boobies. Each breed gets its skin colouring from the type of fish it eats.

Gardner Bay
We swam out to the rock and snorkelled around it. The water was not too clear but it was a lovely temperature.

Pups
These two pups played for all of the 2.5hrs we were on the beach. One touched noses with me and they happily climbed over your feet and legs. They must have been photographed hundreds of times by the three boatloads of tourists on the beach. The adult male spent most of the time patrolling the shore from the water, and calling out to his harem who were sunning themselves.