Sunday, May 6, 2001 -- Española Island

Visit the link above to read the daily Internet reports that our naturalists write, which include a photo of some of the day's wildlife.

We got up before 7 a.m. to see albatrosses, frigate birds, and other seabirds from the ship. This turned out to be sort of silly, given the events of the later morning, but it was a nice opportunity to sniff the ocean air. We can always sleep when we're dead!

After breakfast, we took the pangas to Punta Suarez on Española (Darwin called it Hood Island; I'm planning to use the currently-accepted names), which is the only island we visited where it is possible to see waved albatrosses and the Hood mockingbird. We had obviously not yet adjusted to Galápagos living, and so we brought only one camera ashore, with no extra film. So no pictures of the albatrosses, and only one booby picture, from a distance. You can see an albatross photo on Lindblad's web site, though.

Immediately upon hitting land, we were confronted with Nature. There was a young sea lion lying on one of the concrete steps up from the landing spot, and we had to walk around him. We also had to watch out for sea lion poop, which is not something I ever expected to have to do. It was as if we had to wait for our eyes to adjust to see anything: we'd look out on a field of boulders and just see gray rocks, but soon we'd notice red spots on the rocks which turned out to be Sally Lightfoot crabs. Next, we'd see Hood marine iguanas in their red and green mating coloration. Finally, we'd notice that some of the rocks were actually made of sea lions.

Sweet sealions

Española is the only island where the marine iguanas turn red and green, so if one of them took a vacation on another island, the other marine iguanas would have no idea why he was all got up in fancy costume, and he would have no luck with the ladies. (I pretty much plagiarized this notion from Susan. Thanks, Susan!) We used up all of our film in something like 10 yards, just walking along the path.

Marine iguana, with other stuff in background

This was the longest, most arduous hike of the trip (except one to the summit of an island, which I eschewed for bed) just because it is over loose lava rocks most of the way, with a very hot inland stretch through the albatross nesting sites. We had brought walking sticks ashore from the Polaris, which were very handy on the rough terrain. Every day, the staff offers a long walk, a medium walk (sometimes), or a short walk. The adjective refers mainly to the amount of time you spend in the hot sun, not so much to the distance, and each naturalist can take no more than 16 people at a time, so the group is split up (thank god). Mom and I opted for the long walk, which is a loop of about 1.5 miles, and includes that inland stretch. We walked along the cliff for about half that distance, where we saw blue-footed and nazca boobies, mockingbirds, and a few albatross, as well as three Galápagos hawks (or one hawk three times), which was very exciting, as I'm a big raptor fan. There were little lava lizards scurrying around all over the path, and when they thought you were too close to their territory, they'd do push-ups. We had to watch our feet so we didn't stomp them. The island was also quite green, which our naturalists said was new since the previous week. We passed a few nesting albatross near the end of the first stretch. They are really snazzy from close up, mostly white, but with very subtle gray wavy markings (hence their name) in their feathers. They also have these big, dark eyes, because they are nocturnal. A lot of the birds in the Galápagos seem to be nocturnal, and so have very un-bird-like eyes. Galápagos doves, just to be contrary, have dark eyes but these very bright blue rings around them. Even though it was early in the season, we did get to see a blue-footed booby mating dance. The girls honk, and the boys whistle, sky-point, and lift up their blue feets.

The turnaround for both the long and medium walks is at a blowhole, so we sat down for a while to admire that. There was a red-billed tropicbird flying around near the blowhole, which is a very fancy bird with two long tailfeathers that trail prettily behind it when it flies. There was also a baby booby there, which we were afraid was dead, until it finally moved and relieved us. People had to be warned not to step on it, or on any of the other animals.

More marine iguanas

We turned inland through a huge albatross nesting area. Some of the albatrosses were very clever, and had made their nests (on the ground) under some of the low bushes that were there. It was so hot that I wanted to crawl under there with them. Eventually, we made it back to the beach and were taken back to the boat for lunch.

During lunch and the boat drill afterwards, the boat moved a bit to another part of Española, at Gardner Bay. Mom went on a zodiac to snorkel off the beach so she could get used to it, and I went out to Tortuga Islet (no tortoises there, despite the name) for deepwater snorkeling. This was a great day of snorkeling, where we saw lots of fish, some sea lions, and a white-tipped reef shark.

White-tipped reef shark.

Every time I go snorkeling, I write down the names of the fish I saw so I can match them with my photos later, but I can never remember which name goes with which fish. Ah well. Carlos, one of the guides, used an underwater video camera while snorkeling, so we got to see that footage during the daily recap before dinner, and I wrote down all the fish he showed that I had seen.

Sealion, zooming past me

Paula also gave us a little lecture about mockingbirds, the gist of which (as I wrote it down) was "mockingbirds drink blood." All of Paula's stories seemed to be fairly bloodthirsty. She'd be a good person to have around the campfire.

Anyhow, we stayed in the water for an hour and a half or two hours, which was great. Unfortunately, I swallowed too much seawater. I think my new snorkel with purge valve allowed in too much water, rather than letting it drain out. When I think of all the time Steph and I spent in Hawaii laughing at the doofuses who swallow seawater….

Yellow-tailed surgeonfish

 

New Animal Tally
Sealions	Sally Lightfoot crabs	Hood marine iguanas
Lava lizards	Cactus finch	Red-billed tropicbird
Swallow-tailed gull	Waved albatross	Blue-footed booby
Nazca (formerly called "masked") booby	Galapagos doves	Hood island mockingbird
Frigate birds	Yellow-crowned night heron	American oystercatcher
Small ground finch

Another zooming sealion

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last modified: January 30, 2002