Today, we took another long hike on Espanola that is flat, but very rocky!
It is a long hike only because of (a) all the rocks and (b) there are lot of things to see.
We hopped into the Zodiacs and 10 minutes later, guess who greeted us?
a colony of red/black marine Iguanas. They are EVERYWHERE!
They look furious, don’t they? They actually each algae and crawl up and down the cliffs to eat algae from the waves and come back up to bask in the sun.
We also found our first snake in the Galapagos. This one is known as “Runner”. They do not bite, but they are like the anacondas and like to suffocate their prey.
We also found their prey looking around on the low nests on the island. Their nests are basically on top of the highest rocks they can find. Here is the second Galapagos Hawk we found on this trip.
However, our real mission was to find some Galapogian Alabatrosses.
We found that a lot of them were nesting, but unfortunately we found one egg that had been abandoned. They only lay one chick/egg per season and if the spouse does not return in time with food, they will end the mission and leave the egg.
but to make up for that loss, we found a very young chick with her parents!
Surprisingly, we also found a lot of nesting Blue Boobies here too. Here were two young chicks staying in their mandated circle. They were ticking and craving for their parents to bring them some sardines that will help make their feet blue.
Did you miss any of my other postings about the Galapagos? You can find them here:
David Cross Travel Blog 