January 31, Tuesday – Galapagos, Ecuador –Floreana and Champion Island

This morning we set anchor just off Cormorant Island.  The island has no cormorants and is named after a ship, named the Cormorant, that wrecked off the island.

In the morning we took a Kodiak cruise around the small, nearby Champion Island.  On the way we passed some of the very small rock outcroppings and islets that dot the area.

We didn't get off to walk Champion Island as it is pretty small.  But it was very pretty. 

The island had a lot of cacti growing on it.

The list of species that we saw is as follows:

Sea Lions

Floreana Mockingbird (again, at a long distance).  This mockingbird is extinct on Floreana but an isolated colony was located on Champion Island.

Swallow Tailed Gulls

Blue Footed Boobies

Nazca Boobies

Magnificent Frigatebirds 

A Lava Heron

And Great Blue Heron

And, because the tide was pretty low, a sea lion on a high shelf

And lots of barnacles.

During lunch we re-positioned to Floreana Island.

Mid-day we took a zodiac cruise to a beach on Floreana Island where we walked a short ways in to the “Mail Box”.  This is the only mail system in the world that doesn’t require a postage stamp and all items are hand delivered.  The idea dates back to the whaling days when people dropped off mail and the next ship through would pick up mail to anyone that lived where they were heading.  The sailors would then hand deliver the mail when they got home or wherever they were headed.

The guides read through the addresses and a number of people picked up mail to deliver when they got home.  Some mail takes several years to be delivered as no one is headed that way.

We then got back on our zodiacs from some cruising.  We saw:

a brown pelicans sitting on a rock

and we got a great sequence of a pelican fishing.

We also saw Pacific Green Sea Tortoise…lots of them.  They were very hard to photograph as they just popped up for a quick breath and were then underwater again.

We came across a number of Sea Lions romping and playing in the water (or maybe fighting…hard to tell)

Marine Iguanas

And A Cattle Egret