Galapagos Cruise Day 3 – Afternoon

Thursday 27th August 2015 – Afternoon

After our morning snorkle, we came back to the boat and had lunch. The boat sailed away for 2 hours. We sat on the white chairs facing the ocean just under the captain`s cabin and looked at the horizon most of the time.
Lots of storm petrels came to danse and touch the water in front of the boat, they were beautiful to watch.
Sometimes a fregate or a pelican would cruise by too. Sometimes we saw sea turtles pointing their head out of the water and disappearing again. Most of us also took a nap. We arrived in the bay of Tagus Cove where the boat anchored.
It was 3pm and we got into our snorkling gears again, ready for the afternoon snorkle.
Got into the panga. As in the morning, we screamed when jumping in the water as it was freezing! So funny. 😀
This time the sea was really quiet and no current.  At first, the water looked really dark from outside but once we were in, we kept seeing sea turtles after sea turtles. I was almost getting bored of seeing them. And another one, and another one. You get spoiled here! We also saw a penguin passing by super fast under the water, like a torpedo!
We saw later on 2 other penguins drying their feathers on a rock, we could contemplate them from really close.
Then we saw 2 penguins jumping in the water, but they disappeared so fast that we didn`t see them under the water.
We also saw a sea lion just bathing in the clouds light, we tried to imitate its sound to make it come to play with us, but we were not really good at that. It just ignored us completely, or almost like saying: “Are you guys nuts? The water is freezing, I am much better here! No way!”
There were lots of different type of star fishes on the sea floor, small yellow ones, orange ones with black dots, purple ones with orange dots. There were also Arlequin fish, Damsel fish, Angel fish, Puffer fish, many kind of fishes.
The best of the snorkle was the end when suddenly a cormoran dived into the water and we could see him speeding like a torpedo, searching for a fish, almost bothering a small turtle. And suddenly, it re-surfaced between Patrick and me, Patrick being a really super cool snorkling buddy spotting so much stuff. The cormoran looked at me, it looked at him, with his blue eyes. It was just 1m away from each of us, even less maybe. And it dived again, but it disappeared so fast we could not see anymore where it went. I have in front of my eyes forever that image of that cormoran diving next to the turtle and a second later resurfacing right where we were. What a magical moment! We came back and had 20 minutes to warm up with a quick water shower and then get into walking clothes. Getting to Tanga Cove.

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Boats used to come here in the past and the challenge given to the sailors was to climb as high as possible to tag the name of the boat on the rocks. Because it is part of the Galapagos history, even if they are ugly, those tags have been kept.

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Next to the start of the path.

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Looking behind us, at the boat in the cove.

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We started to walk.  First, at the top of the stairs was waiting an hawk. I have seen hawks before but they fly away when they see humans. That one stayed there, just watching us, a juvenile, very curious to see who we were. That was another magical moment.

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Carlos explained that they don`t like to have anything above us and just go perch themselves higher up to see better so he was walking slowly half-bent to let the hawk remain the highest the longest possible.

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Then the hawk went to perch himself a bit higher up. We all queued to take its photo!

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What a pretty animal.

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I love the way it can turn its head 180 degrees, that`s impressive.

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Then we kept walking. Another type of landscape again, no lava ground this time. Pretty colorful surroundings.

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Then we saw this lake again and again from higher up and higher up. Theories say that maybe on the island in front there was an eruption which caused a tsunami which made a wave so high that the water went up the hill and into here and created this lake! Who knows! It was definitely a magical lake.

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There we saw a Darwin finch, same, not really shy. Just checking us out.

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Some type of cotton tree.

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We all gave our cameras to Carlos to get a group shot. Carlos The Photographer. 🙂

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Group shot.

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Continuing on the path.

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Up we went.

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From the highest view point, we had this expensive view over Isabela Island.

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View of the path from we came and on which we were going to come back.

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The sunset was gorgeous as the sun was hidden in the clouds at first and appeared out of them.

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Then we could see it fully.

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It touched the bottom clouds.

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And disappeared again in them.

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We went back to the beginning of the path and could see the night falling on the cove.

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We saw this star fish called sun star fish before to jump into the panga back to the boat.DSCF2201 (Medium)

Back on the boat, we had proper showers and an awesome dinner, ah the food, the food!!!! 😀

Then at the bar, David and Linda were showing us lots of their travel photos, it was nice to travel through their eyes, to Nasdaq, to a place called Marble Cave in Patagonia, that looked so amazing, to Iquitos and the jungle.
Then we wrote the day down. So much happened. So intense and incredible. Then we slept.

Tonight the boat was staying in the cove.
The Maria boat and another boat had joined us so we are 3 boats in the cove that evening.
Another crazy amazing day gone!