My Trip to Galapagos: Part 2

Once we got to Galapagos, we unpacked and met the captain. He told us we would be going to a new island every day. The ship would  move from island to island, while we were sleeping, and every morning we would wake up on a new island.

On the first day, we went to San Cristóbal and to the breeding center for Giant Tortoises that live there. Giant tortoises are herbivores and can live over a 100 years.  They have no natural predators, though sadly humans have been hunting them so they are now endangered. (Stupid humans!!!)

Can you see it? It’s in a ditch sort of thing. It’s HUGE in real life!

Then we went back to the boat and had dinner.

The second day, we traveled to an island  named Genovesa. We went up the rock steps and observed the assortment  of birds that live there including Finches, Mockingbirds, Frigates, and Red footed boobies (not to be mistaken for blue footed boobies, or any other kind of boobie for that matter). Did you know that male frigates birds have a bright red pouch hanging from their necks that they inflate to impress females? (If I was a female frigate bird, I wouldn’t be very impressed.) We also saw an owl, which was special.

This owl greeted us!

Here’s a teenaged red-footed boobie we saw. You can tell it’s a teen, because its colors aren’t all in yet. It will have a blue beak and red feet when it’s all grown.

Climbing up the steps

I fell down and skinned my knee, elbow and hands on this island. Mama Jen, Camilo (one of the Galapagos naturalists, who was awesome) and a new friend from the trip helped me clean out the lava rocks and get back to it! Look at my knee in the picture — you can really see how bad it was! My new friend Klaus took this picture.

After that, we went snorkeling, and there were sea lions there. Did you know that sea lions are a bit different than seals? Sea lions have ears on the outside and razor sharp teeth that help them eat squid and many different types of fish. A sea lion swam right past me!! Even thought the water was freezing, I still saw a bunch of fish. (That must be the reason sea lions were there.) Then, we went back to the ship and had dinner. In my next post, I will tell you about  the 3^rd and the 4^th islands.

Read my earlier post about Galapagos, if you haven’t already!