Galapagos – Isla Floreana (2)

Breakfast was at 7am – and as good a meal was we had the previous night for dinner – before we all got into the zodiac and wet landed on the local beach.  We encountered some Blue Footed boobies (meaning idiot), a couple of sleeping sea lions, crabs, lizards, locusts and near the end of the beach walk, feeding flamingoes.  We then returned to the boat before heading out for a 45 minute snorkel.  We had all hired half wetsuits the previous day which made for a mostly comfortable time in the water.  We saw loads of fish but also a black and yellow eel and a fast moving sea lion. Deryn also saw a white tipped reef shark.  It was then back into the boat for a short drive to the post office. It’s a barrel used by pirates and whalers to pass messages to each other, but today used as a bit of a gimmick in which we dropped off a couple of post cards and picked up two in areas that we were likely to visit in the next 6 months – in our case Sydney and San Francisco.  The rule is that you have to hand deliver the postcards. We’ll see!

We were then meant to visit the high point of Isla Floreana where the pirates used to ge their water supply but instead decided to do the journey to Isla Isabela in the hope of seeing some Blue Whales – they had been spotted in previous weeks.  It was a tough 11 hours of cruisng at nearly 8 knots to get to Punta Moreno.  There were a few casualties with Deryn, Linda, Conrad and to a lesser extent Tim and Deb, being hit with sea sickness.  We did see a couple of whales but not well enough to justify the day trip. We arrived at our destination at 11.15pm.