Day VI- January 7th, 2oo7
Today started at the lovely hour of 6.ooAM. The naturalists encouraged us to get up and watch the sunrise as well as whales, dolphins and sting rays. Well it was cloudy this morning, so there was no sunrise (although we made up for it tonight at sunset!) And as for the wildlife- all we saw were the birds living on the top of our boat, and some (maybe 2) dolphins swimming in the distance (very far distance). After we gave up our watch (and convinced everyone who wasn't up that they missed huge whales and dozens of dolphins) We got our stuff ready for the day and got some breakfast.

Sunrise from the sun deck

Our first excursion for the day was a hike at Punto Espinoza on Fernandina Island. We first found penguins and various other birds- boobies, comorants, finches.

Our panga ride to the island


The moon was still out when we left


Flightless cormorants- another favorite shot


A penguin!

We arrived on the island to discover thousands of marine iguanas. Apparently it was well into mating season and there were many agressive, unhappy little iguanas (well, actually, they weren't so little) territorially shaking their heads- which really looked like they were doing spastic push-ups. As we continued our hike, we were shown the different types of lave on the island:

The first, "Roping" lava which pretty much looks like giant churros


The second, "Aa Aa" lava, because when you step on it, you say "Aye, Aye!"

A big-old marine iguana

The third is found all over each of the islands; it is just big, smooth boulders that were formed by cooling under water (I can't remember the name of the third type).
We walked through mangroves to a lagoon with marine iguanas fighting and swimming, shrimp, fish, and the biggest, most important of the sightings...sea turtles! We saw several swimming and resting in the shallow water. We walked through paths of all different types of lava, back to the shore to another bay where we saw more sea turtles. They were relatively far away and all we could see was their head and shadow beneath. From the pictures I took, their heads seemed to be nearly reddish in color. After swimming with them, we realized just how large they really were. We continued to a pool where we found sea lions swimming and relaxing with a mama sea lion teaching the baby how to swim. The baby kept getting angry and was bleeting at her.

Yes, that is a crab...hanging from a branch



Two angry marine iguanas fighting eachother in the water



A walk through the mangroves



A sea turtle!!




Pretty view from the island


Again, in the opposite direction

We walked by a place where whale bones were left, a tide pool where an old American ship had crashed and all that was left was the engine- crabs and many different birds and iguanas found it a nice resting spot.

Over a century later, it's just a part of the scenery


They were some big bones!

We made it back to the boat for a little resting time, lunch (Ecuadorian style) then headed out for our last excursion with the M/N Santa Cruz. We took the "long hike-hike" at Urbina Bay. We hiked along the beach and saw a lot of... dead animals. We saw dead blow fish, dead lobsters, crabs and a goat's skull. Pirates had transported goats for food on their ships. When they got to the island and found the massive land tortoises, they decided to leave the goats and take the tortoises because they lived for so long with no food. This caused a crisis in the tortoise population and with no natural preditors, the goat population went out of control. It got to the point where people on the islands were instructed to shoot the goats to bring the population back down. Hence the goat skull, along with strict restrictions on what you can bring onto the islands and through customs. The ecosystem is so secluded that it is extremely vulnerable and delicate.
We walked inland and found land iguanas which were twice the size of marine iguanas and bright yellow. We also saw different plants like the mojuju (sp.) in which the flowers are used to help your hair grow really fast and the berries which can be used as adhesive and posion apple trees which will rip your digestive system apart and most likely kill you or cause a rash on your skin if you touch the insides, but land tortoises and land iguanas find it a tasty treat because their digestive system is so slow. We were not lucky enough to see land tortoises. We did see some corrals and we learned that the corral reef is actually the house that itty bitty corral organisms make. It takes them centuries to grow only centimeters. The ones we saw were also hundreds of meters inland, meaning there was a shift in the land and that the area had once been under water.

"Do you think this is dead or alive?"


A big old dead blowfish- kinda cool, eh?


Matt and Darian facinated by the corral

Up-close shot of the corral



Señor Land Iguana



The mojuju flower and berry

We found our way back to the beach and did a little snorkeling. The water was cloudy and there was kelp floating on the surface. The whole thing creeped me out because I couldn't see what was around me. We saw several fish and Matt found a sea turtle; I saw the behind of it before it scooted away. The part I saw was massive. I'm kinda glad I didn't see the whole thing, I think I would have screamed.

A sting ray hanging out on the bottom

Little fishy

We were called back to shore to head back to the boat. There were four of us who were the last on the island, so we had a wild panga ride back to the boat. We were flying over the waves. We found a dead penguin floating in the water and I saw a dolphin jump in the distance. No one in my group had seen it, but it was confirmed when we got back later when the boat in front of us has seen it too.
Back on the boat, I took a shower and headed up to the sun deck for cocktails. The sunset was absolutely beautiful- of course I had to take tons of photos. We played a bit of poker (with galletas as chips!) and had our farewell dinner. After dinner, Matt and I went up to star watch again.

We may have missed out on sunrise, but sunset made up for it!


Matt and I at the front of the boat

Our classy game of poker

We saw Orion's Belt, Serious, the Little Dipper, Saturn and the Moon. After standing out for awhile, we noticed bright florescent purple balls of light shining in the wake. At first, it was one of two every minute or so, then they started showing every few seconds and in larger groups. Some were bigger or smaller, vibrant and brighter, some glowed for longer than others and some were really long streaks of color. We had no idea what could be making this light, so we went and found the nearest naturalist. Diego, the naturalist, didn't understand our description, so he came with us to the back of the boat, where we had been standing. He told us they were squid. We showed other people our discovery- I thought it was pretty interesting- something you don't see everyday!
We packed our bags and went to bed early with another big day ahead of us starting at 5:45AM.