Day IX- January 1o, 2oo7
It occured to me this morning how wild it is that I'm talking about swimmingand sunburns and it's January! I've never been to a warm place in the winter time before.
Our "early" morning turned more into a 9:30 departure- not so late, but no our usual 6:30 wake up. Matt was feeling a little better than the night before, so we decided to make the most ouf our free day and hike to Tortuga Bay.
First, the hike to the water taxi, then walk through town, then walk from town to the trail, a 2.5 km trail to the beach, a hike across the beach to the bay- There and back worked out to be about 7 miles.
We arrived at the park in horrible heat at 1o:3o. 2o minutes later, the beach. We were so hot all we wanted was to be in the water. the first beach, Tortuga Bay, was too strong of a current to swim- plus we found out later there were sting rays and sharks! We continued to another little bay where the water was calmer and very shallow. It was too murky to snorkel though. The other group (about 15 of them) showed up only a few minutes after we jumped in the water.
I got freaked out that I couldn't see what was in the water, so we decided to go back to the big bay. Picking our things out of the limbs of the trees we left them on (to dry from all the sweat!), Matt battled some bees, I cleaned off the sand from all my stuff, and we walked back. Along the way, we found little bitty crabs in the mangroves who lived in little holes. As soon as you came close enough, they scuttled away in their little holes.

Matt and myself trailing a marine iguana (he wasn't too happy about the whole situation)



We're kinda cute sometimes


Finding some shade in the mangroves

We kept walking until we found a very small bay- maybe even a tide pool. The water was so clear, we decided to check out what was living in it. The second I stood in the water, I could see literally thousands of fish beneath me. With my snorkel gear on and my camera in my hand, I explored the pool. Thousands of fish- all different kinds- were just swimming around. Some of them wanted nothing to do with us and swam away at first glance, but others just swam right up to the camera, almost posing for the picture.

Chinito a.k.a. Justin


Fishies!



These little guys were hams for the camera



So pretty


More fish



This guy was really cool- he would burrow himself and camoflauge into the sand so all you could see were his little red eyes. Then, when you got a little to close, he was jet out of his hiding spot and swim away.

For over an hour we just swam, observing the fish. It started to rain mid-swim and the other group started their trip back to the hotel. We stayed and found some pretty interesting things. A little British kid and his father found an octopus- probably one of the coolest things I've evevr seen- it was like a chameleon- black on black surfaces, white on light surfaces. The rock it was living on looked exactly the same as the surface of it's skin- you could barely see it! Matt picked it up and it suctioned itself to his hand. The little kid scared it in the water and a chunk of ink came out. The Matt found hermit crabs and possibly shrimp. We had fun trying to apply what we had learned from the Naturalists with the hermit crabs. Supposedly they come out of their shell when they smell carbon dioxide because they like to eat dead things and when things decompose, they emit Co2. We were putting them in our mouths and blowing on them trying to get them to come our of their shells. We were successful with a few of them.

Our friend, the octopus



Pulpo Incognito


No, Darian isn't eating the hermit crab



Round two of getting the hermit crab out of his shell. Round one Ashley threw the poor thing because it scared her when he finally came out!

After we had spent enough time in the tide pool, we went to bigger waters and got beaten up by currents and extremely big, strong waves. When Ashley saw the shark, we knew our time was up. We packed everything up and started our hike back to the resort.
On the beach, we found tons of crabs manning their holes. These ones were much bigger and much faster. As soon as they saw us coming, they would get closer to their holes, shove their butts in, and as soon as we got too close, they would duck their heads in. We all had a good laugh watching Matt chase one who wasn't close enough to his hole. He was fast and angry (the crab, not Matt).
As we had had our fun trailing a marine iguana on the way in, we decided we had had enough tormenting of the animals and it was time to get some lunch. We hiked back into town, stopped off at our favorite, Free Soul Cafe, ordered ridiculous amounts of food, stopped by a grocery store and headed back to the resort. We all showered and met back up for some cards, tinto de verano and cuba libre before dinner (a BBQ hosted by the resort). After dinner, everyone decided they were going to go out to a Salsa Bar and meet up with the Naturalists one more time before leaving the Galapagos.
The place was loud and very hot and I was too exhausted to dance (not that I really dance all that much anyway) So we headed back to do some packing and get ready for our departure the next morning.