Day 5 - Fernandina & Isabela Island

Day 5 (Wednesday) took us to Fernandina, the youngest and most westerly of the Galapagos Islands. The ground here is black and rippled. One could be forgiven for thinking that the island was formed last week, as opposed to 300,000 years ago. It is one of the most pristine areas of the islands, i.e. few if any introduced species. Animals like goats, pigs & donkeys have been a real problem on some of the other islands. There have been major efforts to remove these animals and to allow the endemic species to regain their foothold on the land.

On Fernandina we saw huge numbers of marine iguanas. Now, these guys are pretty ugly (Claire doesn´t agree), so it was funny to hear people say how cute the baby marine iguanas were. And they were. Poking their heads up from between the rocks. I guess babies are always cute regardless of how ugly their parents might be.....and no, I don´t have any examples in mind. We were also able to get very close to flightless cormorants & their chicks. Some people claimed to see a whale out in the bay. We didn´t see it but we took some video footage of where they were pointing & will tell you for sure in 15 months!!

The colossal shield of the Fernandina volcano reaches 1494 m and is still very active. The part of the island that we were allowed to explore, Punta Espinoza, is the only area open to visitors.

That afternoon we left Fernandina and took a short hop to the nose of the sea horse (Isabela is shaped like a sea horse) to a place called Punta Vicente Roca. Here we did some snorkeling and kayaking. They were both excellent but the snorkeling stole the show. At one stage, in one field of view, I, Dave, saw a huge turtle with 2 penguins on the waters surface above him and then a sea lion darted between all of them!! What a picture that would have made. Mental note to self - next time bring a waterproof camera. Again, the sea lions were so friendly. They would come so close that you could chase them around in circles. What a buzz.

That evening we crossed the equator for the 3rd time. As the other 2 occasions were at more unsociable hours the crew decided to make a big deal of this crossing. The running gag was "come up to the bridge and feel the bump as we cross the equator"...boom, boom. We all got a certificate, signed by the captain stating that we had crossed the equator aboard The Eclipse. Nice touch.

Dave basques on the lava rock

Pelican in flight