Becalmed

From our Itinerary: Española Island: Gardner Bay / Suarez Point

Here is our schedule for today from our briefing

We were up early and caught the sunrise

before a breakfast of fruit, eggs, and a corn sort of fried bread

We had a rather short nature walk at Gardner Bay and saw some lovely local birds, like Galapagos Doves

Espanola Mocking Birds

Red Billed Tropic Birds

More Yellow Warblers

Sea Lions

an iguana

And a beach gnome

We also saw the following, not pictured: a Galapagos Hawk, Swallow Tailed Gulls and Nazca Boobies

Unfortunately, during this walk I got splashed by a wave and my new iphone has been playing up. I hope it makes it through this trip.... very distressing. (post script: phone dried out after several days and is working fine....)

From there a quick run back to the boat and we moved to the snorkeling. I finally managed to get away from the pack - there were about 30 people at the site and it was crowded. Even so, I saw some star fish, a sea lion, several parrot fish and colorful angel fish. Also included is a rare Chris sighting…

Froze during lunch of a local potato soup and stew. The air conditioning was blowing right on me and Ricky (bartender) was not willing to change the direction of the blower. I was vindicated at dinner when others complained.

The breeze vanished after lunch and it became very still. We moved over to Suarez Point where there was bird flu, so we were not allowed on the island. We had to take a zodiac around the coast of the island and into a small cove. This meant we didn't get the interaction we were hoping for. It was quite choppy and Chris got ill. We saw several sea spouts

Blue footed boobies

Iguana

Turtles

Crabs

And a sea lion

We were very fortunate to see a Waved Albatross.

When we got back to the boat the weather was very still and we had what turned into a plague of gnats. They were everywhere and turning the corners of the ship black. It was disgusting. An executive decision was made to move the boat to the next stop in order to get away from all the bugs.

We had a "cocktail class" where we learned how to make a caipirinha

Dinner was a lovely vegetable cerviche, a terrible fish fillet with cheesy rice (not too bad) and some carrots. Then a lovely "sweet tomato" dessert.

We sailed into the sun set and got ready for a peaceful evening.

I was still wide awake at midnight and decided to see if there were any stars. I got more than I bargained for when I saw the show at the stern of the boat, namely a swarm of sharks...and 1 sealion

and then there were the stars