Today has been the best day yet! I have seen so much wildlife here. Our first stop this morning was on Fernandina island. It was marine iguana central! Over 100 000 iguanas live there and you could definitely smell them once we landed on shore. They all sun bath on the rocks to get warm after they are finished feeding on the green algae on the bottom of the sea.
All the iguanas pile on top of each other to stay warm while they spit the dried salt from inside their noses. It was really amazing to see them go from the beach into the water with the sea lions and swim along there shoreline.
We saw a family of sea lions training their one month old cub in a small pond on the beach. The baby was so small and clearly still blind. Their eyes don’t work until they are six months old. The poor little thing was so clumsy it was easy to see that he was still trying to figure out how all his limbs worked.
Abb'is ankle is quite bruised today but she managed to get out of bed and come with us on the tour of Fernandina island. I think she was still struggling quite a bit but i'm glad she came. I don’t want her to miss anything else. We also came across the skeleton of a whale that had washed ashore 12 years ago. It was still it its exact form, spine ribs and all.
Our first snorkeling trip today was good but the water was freezing. I still managed with out a wetsuit while most of the other had one on. It was a bit shallow in some party and i didn’t really like when the coral and algae rubbed along my stomach but eventually we went deeper and that where we swam with a few sea lions. It still amazes me that they are not scared of us at all. The want to play with us or maybe they are making fun of how awkward we look in the water compared to them! Once the sea lions were gone we saw a couple of massive sea turtles. I didn’t last too much longer in the water after that cause my arms and legs were going numb. I sat in the panga while the rest of the team bobbed about in the water.
About half way up the trail we came across Darwin lake. The lake was formed from a volcano crater. There is so life in the water due to the high levels of magnesium. We could see the minerals along the shores on the lake, they were dark yellow and looked quite out of place beside the crisp clear turquoise water in the lake.
We walked up for quite a ways but it was too hot for me to make it to the top so i turned around and headed back down. The highlands of the island were lifeless except for a few birds and lava lizards. I can see why no animals lived way up there it must have been 40 degrees.
We were all so hot and sweaty by the time we made it down to the bottom we were eager to get back on the water for or next snorkel trip.
We took the pangas about 15 minutes away from the boat and jumped into the water. It was so fresh and felt great on my hot skin. Right away we saw turtles. There were so many of them, i reached out and let my fingers slide down the shell of one right in front of me and he didn’t seem to mind at all.
As i followed 2 other turtles around 3 little penguins came flying out of the shallow water! Finally! This is what i have been waiting for all week! I swam as fast as i could to keep up with them as they did loops around the little sardines they were chasing. They were very fast and i only got to hang out with them for 5 minute or so but it made my whole day :)
the water was pretty nice on this trip so i stayed in the water for quite a while. We kept seeing turtle after turtle and i got to dive down beside one of them and get my picture taken. I look a bit ridiculous in all my snorkel gear but it was worth it for the picture. I'll have to get one of the Slovenian girls to email it to me.
By this time it was getting late and our guide was calling us back to the boat. We have to head to sea quite early tonight because its gonna take 14 hours to get to our next stop. We have to go up and around the equator again. This makes me nervous because the last time we did this the ocean was incredibly rough and none of us got any sleep and we all felt quite sick in the morning. You'd think we'd be used to it by now....
Wish us luck!
... it is now morning on Sept 1 and its our last full day on the boat.! It seems like the last bit of the trip has gone so fast.
I just wanted to write a post about last night.
After dinner we were cruising the sea and it was a very clear night. The water was the calmest its been on the whole trip. Abbi, Julie, and i spent 2 hours star gazing on the back sun deck listening to radiohead. It was one of the highlights of the the trip for me. The sky was so clear we could see the stars for miles and miles. It was almost as though we could see the shape of the earth because we could see where the stars met the water. We saw a dozen shooting stars and a whole new set of constellations.
We finally got cold and damp enough that it was time to head in and afterwards, i had the best sleep of the trip yet.
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