Galapagos Day 7: Floreana

 

We woke up by Floreana, a Southern island that was a popular stop for whalers in the 1800s and once had an Ecuadorian penal colony on it.

I especially like the description of the Bishop of Panama Tomas de Berlanga in 1535, who seems to have been among the first to step foot on the island. Their voyage was meant to take a few weeks but they were sucked out into the Pacific Ocean and stranded. After days of drifting with no freshwater, they eventually stumbled on Floreana, which looked promising: “thinking that, on account of its size and monstrous shape, there could not fail to be rivers and fruits.” But he was wrong! They tried to dig wells but “there came out water saltier than that of the sea.” They ended up tearing apart cactuses and drank from them “as though they were rose water.” 

They did eventually find some freshwater, but all in all, Berlanga wasn’t impressed: “on the whole island I do not think that there is a place where one might sow a bushel of corn, because most of it is full of very big stones, so much so that it seems as though at some time God had showered stones.” What earth there is “is like slag, worthless.”

Slag and worthless but beautiful!

Off to snorkel (this is Martin wrapped up next to the one 7 year old girl on the cruise)

Don’t worry guys I’ll discover the Galapagos for us

The famous mailbox of Floreana. From wiki: Since the 19th century, whalers kept a wooden barrel at Post Office Bay, so that mail could be picked up and delivered to their destination by ships on their way home, mainly to Europe and the United States. Cards and letters are still placed in the barrel without any postage. Visitors sift through the letters and cards in order to deliver them by hand

Blue footed boobies!

More mailbox time

Al Fresco restaurant on ship—Martin is feeling like we’ve been eating too much?

Time for sleep and reading!

Then in the afternoon we headed to a different part of Floreana to look at flamingos and baby sea turtles hatching.

Very cute but also very doomed—only 1 in 1000 baby sea turtles will make it to adulthood. We saw two frigate birds competing to eat them which was horrific! We have totally turned on the frigate birds.

After happy hour, someone realized there were tons of sharks circling the ship! We watched them hunt flying fish. Very unsettling! Don’t worry parents, the snorkeling is over for this trip!

Milky Way was amazing

Moonrise!

Tomorrow, the last full day of our cruise is on land— we are going to meet the giant tortoises and go to the Darwin center. Sylvia is REALLY excited.