Ep. 28 – Galapagos Islands

Hello!

Here’s our favourite travel video from this year: the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. We had an incredible time sailing around the archipelago on a 16 passenger yacht for 8 days. We saw amazing wildlife both on the islands and underwater where we snorkelled with sea lions, penguins, turtles and marine iguanas!

This video is a little longer than usual but well worth a watch – if you do, don’t forget to set to 1080p!

Sophie & Dave

North Seymour – Galapagos Islands

Day 8: North Seymour Island – Baltra Airport

We had an early start on the final day of our Galapagos adventure, disembarking from the boats at 6:30am for a short hike around North Seymour. It is a tiny island located near Baltra island, where the main airport is. The island was formed almost a million years ago by an uplift of submarine lava and you can see still some of the remnants of marine fossils dotted around the island.

The island is home to one of the largest populations of bird life in the archipelago, despite being less than a square mile in size. As we got off the zodiacs, you could see a tremendous amount of bird life circling the shoreline. We were lucky enough to see a few male frigate birds doing their mating ritual as it was quite late in the year and most had already mated. It was so fascinating to watch them completely inflate their bright red balloon-like sac in their throat to attract the females. We actually paused to see one performing the ritual and then circled back at the end of our walk to find him sat with his wing around a female! The gesture seemed so humanlike, it was very interesting to see. There are two types of Frigate bird in the Galapagos; The Magnificent Frigatebird and the Common Frigatebird – the Common one has slightly greenish feathers on its back. As we continued our loop around the island we also caught a glimpse of a mother feeding a juvenile frigate, and watched its whole head disappear as the mother regurgitated the food.

Aside from frigate birds, the island is home to several a Blue-footed boobies and we caught one performing his own mating dance on top of a rock. The coastline was also dotted with the last sea lions we would see.

We headed back to the boat for breakfast while the captain sailed the short distance to Baltra Island. We left the boat at 8:30 and were shuttled to the airport via bus. When we had booked the tour we were informed we’d be dropped off at around midday so had subsequently booked a flight at 3pm to play it safe. Neither of us were particularly impressed by the prospect of 6 hours in the airport. However, it did make us even more thankful that we didn’t opt for a 5 day cruise as effectively two days are lost in transit!

Join us next time as we head to Colombia!

Sophie & Dave

 

Santiago & Rabida – Galapagos Islands

Day 7: Santiago Island (James Bay) & Rabida Island

We were warned that the night’s sailing to Santiago Island would be the roughest yet but we were pleasantly surprised to barely have felt it. We left early in the morning to Santiago Island armed with our snorkelling gear and wetsuit for later as we wouldn’t be returning to the boat until lunch time. We first went off for our morning hike. The tide was low creating lots of tide pools along the rocks where we saw quite a few young sea lions sleeping and playing within them. We saw lots of Sally lightfoot crabs and even a couple who were foaming – apparently this means they are ready to shed their shells! We spotted a couple of our first Fur Seals in the Galapagos. Though called seals, they technically are still sea lions as they have the little ears, however their eyes and whiskers are much larger than the Galapagos Sea Lions. They are also the only animals in the Galapagos to fear humans as they were once hunted for their fur by whalers and pirates.

We came back to the beach and put on our wetsuits which proved to be quite the challenge when trying not to get any sand in them. The water temperature was warmer than when we swam on the west coast of Isabela and the types of fish were reflected in this: they were more tropical and colourful. There were lots of huge parrot fish like we saw in Thailand. The highlight was without a doubt a little baby sea lion who played and swam around Dave and I for about 10 minutes! He was by far the most playful sea lion we had encountered yet and even came to bump his nose on the GoPro twice and even tried to playfully bite it once – we have an awesome still from the video! What was even more amazing was that he picked up two different sea shells from the sandy bottom, his behaviour was so dog-like, it was crazy!

We hopped back on the boat for lunch and headed to Rabida Island, a short 3 hour navigation away. Rabida island, at just 5km², is famous for its distinctive red sand beaches due to the high amounts of iron found in the lava rocks. We saw lots of flowering cacti and a couple of endemic Galapagos Carpenter bees buzzing around them. The females are all black whereas the males are yellow/brown. We have seen the Prickly Pear cactus on most islands in the Galapagos, however, on Rabida island, the cactus has evolved to have soft spines due to a lack of predators. We did a short 30 minute hike up to one of the viewpoints before returning back to the beach to snorkel for our last time in the Galapagos. We snorkelled along the cliff line alongside a myriad of fish and even one ray sleeping on the bottom. As we were returning to the shoreline, the most adorable and friendly sea lion pup came to bid us farewell. By this point there were only 4 of us left in the water and he seemed to be enjoying our company while pirouetting and blowing bubbles at us underwater.

Join us next time as we head to our final destination in the Galapagos, North Seymour island.

Sophie & Dave

 

Isabela Island, Galapagos, Ecuador

Tagus Cove, Isabela & Fernandina – Galapagos Islands

Day 6: Tagus Cove, Isabela Island and  Fernandina Island

We had breakfast a little earlier than usual so that we could be out on the zodiacs at 7am to see the sea birds when they are at their most active. We saw cormorants, pelicans & blue footed boobies along the rocks of Tagus Cove. We then pulled up to the staircase for our morning hike. Tagus Cove is really famous in the Galapagos because of the graffiti you can find there. People have etched the name of their boats and the year in the rock for hundreds of years. We saw the earliest engraving which was from the boat called Phoenix in 1836! Name carving has been banned since the 90s.

We started to walk up the hill and came to our first viewpoint of the spectacular Darwin lake. It is a beautiful turquoise salt lake sat next to the ocean but without any link to it. Though there wasn’t much in the way of wildlife, we both agreed it was our favourite landscape walk. The island was covered in white trees that made the most stark contrasts against the blue of Darwin lake. We stopped at 3 different viewpoints on our walk offering different perspectives of the lake whilst the final viewpoint at the top even let us see Wolf Volcano on another island! Back at the bottom, as we waited for the zodiacs, a huge pod of penguins swam past us! It was by far the most we had seen and I was so happy to be quick enough to snap a photograph which has over 16 penguins in one photo!

We came back to the boat for a quick wet suit change ready for our first snorkel of the day. Dave was ahead at the front of the group and said he chased the group of penguins only for them to change direction and swim right past him! I didn’t see the big group but I did have one rogue penguin swim straight into my goggles as I came round the corner of a rock! Unfortunately we didn’t capture either penguin encounter on the GoPro but it was a highlight for both of us! On this snorkel, we saw SO many starfish! There’s a few different types of starfish included a small yellow one with brown spots called the Chocolate Chip Starfish – seriously! Our guide also spotted a small Jackson shark resting on the ocean floor though he was quite far down and Dave and I are rubbish at free diving so we didn’t get to see it too clearly.

We got back on the boat for a short 40 minute navigation across to Fernandina island where we would have our second snorkel of the morning. This was our favourite snorkel so far because it was so diverse! For the first time, we saw marine iguanas diving under the water and munching on algae on the rocks. These incredible reptiles can hold their breath for up to 40 minutes! We saw 1 dive down, 3 eating underwater and 1 swimming along the surface towards us – it was so bizarre and absolutely amazing!

We swam further on and came in to a group of sea turtles where it was genuinely a struggle to swim around and not hit any of them! I’ve never seen anything like it, there were about 7 massive ones in a cluster! We both saw a flightless cormorant diving down underwater which was so fast but awesome. We then saw a penguin in the water, tried to follow him and then just round the corner, we found him sat on the rock right next to us whilst a sea lion played with us underwater! We managed to snap a photo with us and the penguin on the GoPro.

In the afternoon, we set off for our hike around Fernandina island. Fernandina island is the youngest of all the Galapagos islands and also the most untouched. It doesn’t have any introduced plant or animal species, so the island remains exactly as it was thousands of years ago. It is also a famous island because it is where BBC’s Blue Planet filmed the iconic snakes-chasing-baby-iguanas scene. Unfortunately that precise location is in a part of the island that tourists cannot visit, plus it wasn’t the right season. Having said that, I was so happy to spot a Racer snake snoozing in the shade in a crevice in the rocks! It was quite thin but really long – it had about 10 ‘bends’ where it lay and if you pulled it taut, so to speak, it would have been about 2 metres long!

The shores of Fernandina island have the highest concentration of marine iguanas. Everywhere you looked, there would be an iguana. There were so many that we even saw one with a Darwin finch perched upon it and one with a crab on top of it. These marine iguanas often spit too which is such a strange sight! They do it to exhale the salt water in their lungs from their dives in the ocean! They are so quick but Dave caught one spitting on film.

Fernandina island was special because we we got to see such diverse wildlife all seemingly sat side by side! A Galapagos hawk sat next to some chunky marine iguanas. Flightless cormorant birds next to the iguanas. Even sea turtles sunbathing in the shallows of the beach only half submerged with their shells poking out! I took one of my favourite photos from this trip where you can see marine iguanas, sea lions and sea turtles all in one spot!

We also saw an Oyster catcher bird who was protecting two eggs that it had laid so close to the path! There was no nest, just the eggs on the bare rock – something we had never seen before! The most fascinating animal however was the lizard on Fernandina island. We saw a larger lizard eating a small lizard!! Apparently when food is extremely scarce, the animals can resort to canabalism where the bigger ones prey on the small ones. I took a photograph and our guide, Fabian, even asked me to send it to him because in his whole life living in the Galapagos and then 10 years as a guide, he’d never seen it himself! Definitely my rarest and luckiest picture ever!

When we came back on board the yacht for the evening, we were all very excited when the Captain sounded the alarm to let us know there was a whale nearby. We only saw a brief spurt and its’ back so we don’t even know what type of whale it was but it was still awesome!

Thanks for reading and join us for the next day of the Galapagos cruise!

Sophie & Dave

West Isabela – Galapagos Islands

Day 5: Punta Moreno & Elizabeth Bay on Isabela island

We came upstairs for breakfast and were treated to a spectacular view when we looked out the window: blue skies and Volcan Azul (blue volcano). We sailed through the night round the south of Isabela island arriving at Punta Moreno. Apparently the trip was meant to take 10/11 hours but only took 7 and a half because conditions were a lot better than usual.

We set out early for our morning hike and as we neared the shore on the zodiac, we saw a mother pelican land in the nest to feed her young by opening it’s huge mouth to pass on the regurgitated food. I have never seen anything like it! Though our view was slightly obscured by the trees, we still glimpsed the baby’s neck all the way inside the mother’s mouth and I even managed to take a photograph that I’m really proud of!

This part of the island is covered in lava rock from the nearby Volcan Azul. It was a landscape that we had never seen before; black, broken and barren. It can take upwards of 200 years following an eruption before the vegetation really starts to grow. Given it erupted as recently as 2008 only a few cactus plants were to be seen. There are three types of cactus found in the Galapagos, here was where we saw the Lava cactus for the first time, each plant often had different coloured parts.

It was really surprising to see pools of water quite far inland that seemed completely cut-off from the ocean. It was even more surprising to see several Galapagos ducks swimming around in them. As we neared the sea, there were a few larger rock pool lagoons. We were so lucky to find the largest pool full of incredible marine life; 2 white tipped reef sharks, one sea turtle, 3 pufferfish and a sting ray! When the tide changes, these animals would make their way back in to the ocean.

After the hike, we had a quick change in to our wet suits ready to snorkel. As we were now properly in the west of the Galapagos archipelago, the water temperature dropped a huge amount. It was bloody freezing but still worth persevering through. We saw lots of huge sea turtles chomping on the algae on the rocks. I saw a massive hieroglyphic hawkfish too which has a really striking blue and yellow pattern. I was in my own little world when we were snorkeling and rarely bothered to come up to the surface to see where everyone else was. When I finally surfaced, I realised that our whole group apart from me and one other had bailed because the water was too cold. Unlucky for them because that’s when I saw a Galapagos penguin streak past me!

In the afternoon, we went out wildlife spotting on the inflatable zodiac motor boats around Elizabeth Bay. As we entered the mangroves, a couple of Galapagos penguins were hopping through the water in front of us, with a playful sea lion close behind! This sea lion seemed to love the attention and had great fun swimming and twirling around our boat. He kept popping his head out of the water as if to check we were still watching.

We went through the shallow, mangrove-lined waters, turned off the engine and then paddled. We saw SO many sea turtles, it was absolutely mad! You could look in any direction and were guaranteed to see a turtle pop it’s head out the water, we’d often count 6 together at once. We’ve now seen a lot of sea turtles when snorkeling (which still fascinates me every time) but it was really nice to get a different perspective and see them from the surface. Also where else in the world would you see sea turtles, sea lions and penguins swimming alongside each other?!

It was here that we saw the rare flightless cormorant! Even within the Galapagos, this bird can only be found in the western part. The bird has evolved to have these absolutely tiny, stumpy wings but the largest body of all cormorants. In the Galapagos, the cormorant lost it’s ability to fly because there was so need when searching for food, another of the incredible bits of evolutionary evidence the Galapagos has to offer. This was particularly special for me as it was actually the Cormorant bird I first saw in Byron Bay, Australia that got me in to bird watching and downloading bird guides! We also saw some more species of heron (the lava heron and Great blue heron), Blue footed boobies and even some really young white fluffy chicks.

As we got back on the boat and began sailing north, we got to enjoy our first beautiful sunset of the Galapagos with clear skies! Join us next time as we head along the coast of Isabela island to Tagus Cove.

Thanks for reading,

Sophie & Dave

 

 

South Isabela – Galapagos Islands

Day 4: Isabela Island, Puerto Villamil & Sierra Negra Volcano

We sailed through the night, our longest navigation yet, and arrived at Isabela island. Isabela is the largest island of the Galapagos but only has a population of just over 2,200 people. Less than 1% of the land is privately owned, the rest of the land is national park. In the morning, we headed to Puerto Villamil where we caught the “chicken bus” 40 minutes inland towards our destination; the Volcano Sierra Negra. Sierra Negra is one of the most active volcanos in the Galapagos, last erupting in 2005. The chicken bus was sort of a converted truck with wooden benches in the back and open sides, although surprisingly quite comfortable.

We got off at the bottom of the volcano and started our hike, which was the most strenuous of the all the Galapagos walks so far, but by no means particularly difficult. We were headed to see one of the largest calderas in the world. It is essentially numerous collapsed volcanoes which make about a 10km2 crater. The depression is situated up in the highlands so it was very misty and a bit wet which didn’t bode well for the views at the top. There wasn’t much in the way of wildlife on the walk up other than quite a few of Darwin’s finches. Whilst it was an impressive sight, we only got to see glimpses of it through the mist. We waited for it to pass and managed to get a slightly clearer view but still a bit foggy.

Back at the port, we had a bit of time to wander round. We went along a short mangrove boardwalk that was lined with seals and marine iguanas. Back by the beach there were quite a few benches where huge sea lions had climbed up and made themselves comfortable for a nap. Whilst we waited for our little zodiac boat at the pier, we saw an Eagle Ray gliding through the shallows. The Galapagos waters are just so incredible that you can see such fascinating animals even from land!

After lunch, we headed back out to see the Giant Tortoise rearing centre that focused on species from Isabela island. It wasn’t as educational as the Santa Cruz research station but we did get to see tiny, preserved tortoise embryos of 1,2,3 and 4 months! It was really interesting to see the shell growing even within the egg as it is easy to forget that the shell ultimately is a bone. The highlight was when the guide brought out a gorgeous 7 month old baby tortoise, it was smaller than the palm of a hand, and so crazy to think it will grow to 250kg!

Isabela is the only island with multiple species of giant tortoises. The volcanic terrain and different environments have allowed up to 5 different species to evolve. The Cerro Azul tortoises have domed shells, the shortest limbs and are some of the biggest found in the Galapagos as they live in a lush environment with plenty of food. The nearby Sierra Negra tortoises however, live in a dry habitat with limited food so they have evolved to have longer limbs and necks to be able to reach the cactus plants, their primary food source. They also have the most unusual flattened saddleback shells which enable them to further elongate their necks (see photo below!). They actually had to be rescued back in 1998 as they were surrounded and trapped by lava following an eruption in Cerro Azul.

From the breeding centre, we walked along a boardwalk to where there are little salt and fresh water pools, home to Galapagos Flamingos! What’s special about the Galapagos Flamingo is their colouring. The most accurate description would be a pink stabilo highlighter! It was fascinating to watch the flamingos sweeping their heads back and forth as they searched for their favourite food – brine shrimp. We had a little bit of free time to wander round the tiny Isabela town, the last bit of civilisation we would be seeing for the rest of the cruise. We walked along the beach and saw the biggest group of marine iguanas we’ve seen yet, easily at least 50, mostly young ones with one massive adult! We also poked our heads in the Church which had stained glass windows featuring the animals of the Galapagos and right at the alter, there was a statue of Jesus in the tropical sky looking down on the ocean, beach and animals. It was interesting to see the very animals that sparked the theory of evolution inside a church. We then headed back to our yacht aboard the zodiac where we saw our first Manta Ray gliding near the surface!

Thanks for reading and join us for the next day of the cruise.

Sophie & Dave