Floreana Island

Today, our Expedition Leader Carlos Romero made an early wakeup call so we could go and visit the famous Post Office Bay on Floreana Island. This historical place is the oldest postal service, not only in Ecuador, but in the Americas. It is believed that it began around the year of 1793. The wooden barrel was placed there by a whaler named James Colnett. As whalers spent a long time away from home, in many cases years, the ships passing by would come to the barrel and post their own mail with the hope that one day the messages they left in the barrel would be delivered. In the past it took a long time for messages, which were going mainly to England, to arrive at their final destinations. Nowadays it is much quicker. If you come to visit the Galápagos Islands make sure you have paid all your bills, because if you think that you can pay them in time by going to this Post office, it depends how lucky you are.

This morning our guests hand-picked quite a few post cards, hopefully by next week all of them will be delivered without using stamps! After this amusing outing we returned on board for a well deserved breakfast. Later on, we went on a Zodiac ride around Champion Islet. Our main goal was to locate the very rare Floreana mocking bird, and we did it! We also found Galápagos sea lions pups playing cheerfully jumping up and down. We saw Red-billed tropic birds, Opuntia cacti, some Darwin finches and Swallow tailed gulls as well. Our Naturalist, Gilda Gonzalez, was our heroine today. She jumped in the water to save one of these endemic gulls. The bird was tragically tangled in plastic and could not fly. It was a wonderful thing she did, going way beyond the call of duty.

After a wonderful snorkeling outing around Champion Islet, a great spot where we saw a huge variety of fish species and played with Galápagos sea lions, we came back on board and had a superb lunch. There was time to rest for most our guests. Some guests decided to go on a kayak ride and they surely had a great time. At four o’clock we went to visit Punta Cormorant where we saw a green olivine sandy beach, greater flamingos, golden rays and frigate birds. When we were ready to board the Zodiacs on our way back, we encountered a young flamingo at the beach away from the brackish lagoon they usually are found in. The bird was observed fiddling around the beach and it became one of the highlights of the day. It just stayed there with no fear what so ever. It was a delight for the many photographers we have on this expedition.

Finally, once on board and after a refreshing shower, snacks and cocktails we took part in our traditional recaps and nightly briefing. I took the opportunity to talk about the human history of Floreana Island which is amusing, interesting and mysterious. It was another day in paradise. In the next few days I hope to have more great stories to tell.