Bartolome Island

Today started bright and early with a 5am wake-up. A bus picked me up from the hotel at 5:15, collected a bunch of other passengers around Puerto Ayora, and deposited us at the docks by 6:00. We then took a 3.5 hour boat trip to Bartolome Island, during which we were served a pretty decent breakfast (the crew claimed the boiled eggs to be Blue-footed Boobies, though they tasted suspiciously like chicken eggs...) and made some friends among the group. About half the group only spoke German, but among the English speakers I met Luke and Katie, a musician couple from the UK spending their honeymoon backpacking in South America, and Donna, a real estate agent from Chicago here for a week (she was actually the first foreigner I met who WASN´T doing multiple months of backpacking).

We got to our destination by 11am, and right at the boat´s landing site were greeted by 3 or 4 iguanas lazing about on the rocks, as well as about a dozen crabs. Pelicans and frigate birds were flying overhead, and we spotted a couple of turtles in the water - another day at the office here in Galapagos :-) Our guide Daniel lead us up a hill of volcanic rock, explaining how this rock was essentially cooled lava foam and therefore very porous and light. Half the group then proceeded to pick up large bits of rock and pose for "strong man" photos. At the top of the hill, which turned out to double as a lighthouse, we were rewarded with a gorgeous view over a sandy beach stretching out between two towers of rock. More photography followed, and we were delighted to learn we´d be heading to that very beach next.

After a brief visit back to the boat to change into swimming gear, we headed to the beach and met a couple of penguins on the way. They were standing on some rocks, curiously looking at us and looking ridiculously cute when they cuddled and cleaned each other. As soon as we got past them and hit the beach, a couple of sea lions also emerged from the water and joined us on the sand. They seemed as curious about us as we were about them, and were definitely not afraid of us - we got within easy petting distance of the animals, although any sudden motion from their part still resulted in a bunch of scared tourists running around. Hey, you never know what they´re going to do, right... :-) The sea lions eventually shambled into the shade of a nearby rock formation and proceeded to take a nap on the sand. It was fun watching them twitch and turn in their sleep; at the end there were maybe 6 or 7 of them.

In the mean time, we donned our fins and masks and went snorkeling. After looking at the usual collection of small gray fish, we were joined by an armada of 5-6 penguins! In customary Galapagos fashion, they couldn´t care less about our presence, but went happily about catching their lunch. The penguins looked like small black-and-white torpedoes as they glided through the water in formation, flapping their little flightless wings. Very cute! The penguins were occasionally joined in their fishing pursuit by frigate birds nose-diving through the water surface at amazing speeds; I now have a pretty good idea where the WW2 era Stuka dive-bombers got their design inspiration from. Also saw a small (less than 1m) shark near the shore, apparently some others in the group caught sight of a slightly larger (1.5m) white tip.

All that done, we got back on the boat, ate fish and rice for lunch, grabbed a couple of cold beers, and headed home. Rough seas on the way back made half the group sea-sick, but I happily slept throughout most of the trip with no problems whatsoever. Guess either the Scandinavian viking genes or Portuguese seafarer ancestry helped here :-)

Got back to town around 18:30, quick shower, dinner, blogging. Tomorrow´s tour to Seymour Island starts incredibly late in the day, at 8am, which means I get to sleep in till 7:15. Oh, the luxury!


P.S. No news on the drowned diver yet, checked www.cdnn.info and tried Google... May need to give it a few days. On the positive side, Barack Obama won - there is hope for America yet!

P.P.S. I heard a plausible explanation for why internet connection speeds on Galapagos seem to uniformly suck - apparently it´s all satellite-based, as there are no fixed lines between the islands and the mainland. And, due to technical limitations, satellites have miserable upload speeds. So, getting those photos on-line will probably have to wait until I´m back in Quito or, more likely, Lima.