During the night we sail to Genovesa Island- in the north of the Galapagos Archipelago. We have a wet landing in Darwin Bay which is filled with nesting swallow tail gulls, frigate birds, red footed boobies, Nazca boobies and we even see a striated heron. There are several semi grown chicks…fluffy down between adult feathers and faces that only a mother could love!
There is a large group of male frigate birds that are in the shrubs and every time a female or two fly over they all burst into whistling and blowing their sacs up to attempt to attract a lovely lady. One male had three juvenile females around him, that would not be ready to mate yet… Pete made the comment that the male should stop flirting with the teenagers 🙂 .
We went snorkelling off the beach, but kept a wide berth from an agro alpha male sea lion. The main purpose was to try and see some baby sharks- white tips to be more specific. Some of the group did see them, others not.
After lunch we go snorkelling at Darwin’s Bay, off the panga. We have a great long snorkel with an exciting new species of fish we haven’t seen before- they have a sapphire neon sparkle, the small ones are nearly totally sapphire and larger ones have bright dots on them. We also see Idol Moorfish- they have a long white tail fin- similar to the red billed tropic birds.
Once the snorkel is complete we get our dry gear on, to climb to the Prince Phillip Step lookout. There are around 350 steps to the top, and the journey is broken up with stories from our guide- and he even magically finished one! He was really bad at starting them, then getting side tracked and finishing somewhere else entirely. I still need to Google some documentaries about the Baroness and the toothless Germans… crazy people! They removed all their teeth and became vegetarians?!? Like I said… I need more info!
