Galapagos Day 2: The Cruise, Bruja Mountain

This morning, we woke up early to go walking on the Main Street of San Cristobal. We saw baby sea lions on the side of the walkways, and other ones nursing. It was very funny to see what seemed to be female sea lions yelling at adolescent sea lions who were trying to nurse (what we read into it was was “no more for you, you’re old enough to fish now”)

Perfect dog

Perfect sea lion pup

Martin and Darwin and the Beagle (his ship)

Darwin is everywhere and here he has a secret

Then we trekked over to a viewpoint someone at the hotel had mentioned. Martin was worried about how little we would be walking on the ship and wanted to walk. It was very pretty and very hot.

“Me. I’m Charles Darwin.”

Spotted our cruise ship!

Agressive looking logo for people who spend so much time protecting nature

By the time we were back at our hotel and in town looking for final necessities, Sylvia was overheated. Martin went to scope out shops while she drank an iced coffee in an air conditioned store. Martin made a joke about “testing you in different conditions” and Sylvia didn’t laugh.

Then we met up with everyone taking the cruise on a pier. We were introduced to the naturalist guides. We rode “pangas,” the boats we take on excursions, up to the Evolution yacht, which I believe was a decommissioned fishing boat.

We started off with lunch and then met our cruise director, Leonardo, who was a bit nervous because he’d just been promoted. We then we met the head naturalist, Bolo, who gave us a sense how our days would go. We then had about an hour to unpack (Martin created a system, Sylvia was told to “help” but she understood that the way to “help” was to watch without messing up said system). This hour of unpacking was interrupted by the sighting of “kicker rock”, a really beautiful rock formation. 

The highlight of martins trip

Cute turtle welcome chocolate

Then “we” finished unpacking, did a safety drill, then headed out for our first excursion to Bruja something. We did a panga ride saw blue footed boobies, some sea turtles, and ended up on an amazing beach where we got to swim and watch birds dive aggressively into the water to fish. Magical.

Martin enthused by safety 

Blue footed boobies

Then we headed back to the boat for happy hour, before Monica one of the naturalists gave us a snorkeling safety lecture and told us about tomorrow. Then we did a welcome toast with the boats crew, then headed to dinner.