Day 6, with giant tortoises and photographically perfect sunset, was a big day. Day 7 was, intentionally or not, far less vigorous and more relaxed, which was much appreciated as we were all pretty wiped by this point of the trip.
We started with a wet landing at Cormorant Bay (Punta Cormorant) on Floreana. The map above is accurate, as usual. We landed on the green sand, olivine, beach and popped over to the lagoon where we did indeed see some flamingos.
It was still relatively dark and overcast, not worth trying to get photos, and the flamingos flew off anyway as soon as we arrived. There was a shorebird in the distance, so I took the picture below and tried to make something of it.
The original was dull (no sunlight, remember), but it captured a gentle moment of the shorebird wandering the lagoon. Given that it was already flat with color, I made it B+W and blew out the corners. Does it work? Maybe? Not something I’d put on my wall, but it’s not a bad piece.
We walked over a hill to a small beach, maybe 100 yards long (where it says ‘stingrays’. We did not see any stingrays). There wasn’t much on this beach, and we sat around for a while just hanging out. I managed a nice capture of a hermit crab, below. I’m a big fan of the wide crop, particularly for something like this with a clear horizon line and very little vertical structure.
And that was basically it for Cormorant Bay.
Next up was a wonderful snorkel nearby at Champion. There were 2 drop-off points, one off the point of the island, into a rough current, and the second around toward the sheltered bay. All but the two of us and Tui dropped into the calm waters. We dove right into the strong current, and were very glad we did. We dropped right in to a giant school of angelfish (it’s a 2-minute clip – the closeups are later in the video after I got my bearings).
We were told to swim towards the left to the protected area, where the rest of the group was, so we took off in that direction against the tide. After a few minutes we looked around and realized we were completely alone. No boat. No Tui. No other people. We had a brief “Open Water” feeling, but figured we either were between Tui and the chase boat and the other group, or behind them. Either way, we knew we just had to keep swimming around the corner and thought, with some amount of confidence, we’d eventually meet up with the group.
After a few minutes of swimming upstream, the waters calmed and we were greeted by a large family of playful sea lions. We had seen a lot of sea lions during the trip, but these were the most playful and most numerous, and the water clarity was perfect. The medley of clips below captures the playfulness, including the now familiar sea lion rushing towards us while blowing bubbles and showing their sharp teeth in an attempt to evoke a reaction (good example at 1:56), and the sea lions practicing corralling fish (with the goal of peeling one off for dinner – for now they were just playing. Scroll to 2:06). It was frenzied sea lion madness everywhere we looked.
We were pretty tired after the snorkel, so the rest of the day was a nice respite from physical activity.
Our first stop after lunch was at “Mirador de la Baroness” (Baroness Viewpoint), which involved a small hike up to a platform on a hill. Here’s the view from the top.
Up here, we sat and listened as Tui told us the sordid story of the Baroness and Floreana island. The Baroness was not actually a baroness… and the story just gets weirder after that. This is a pretty good summary of the crazy story. The 2-minute trailer is wild – check it out!
We then hopped over to the post office, a ritual for every visitor to the Galapagos. You can read the history at the link, but the current role is as a postcard exchange for visitors. You drop off postcards addressed to yourself or others into the barrel, then look through a large stack and pick up postcards to hand deliver to someone after you leave the islands. Just a few weeks after we returned home someone walked up our driveway and hand delivered the postcard we had left on the island! It’s a neat, if a little bit cheesy, experience. Bonus fun fact: The pandemic bankrupted the Ecuadorian postal service, so this old barrel on Floreana is the only remaining public post office box in all of Ecuador.
And that was about it for the day. Earlier in the day, possibly at Baroness viewpoint, I finally dialed in the settings to capture the blue-footed booby dives.
