Friday, February 3, 2017, Espanola Island

We expected a dry landing at Suarez Point on Espanola Island, but the tide was too high and the concrete dock was awash. Instead, we beached the Zodiac and waded ashore. Beth had stayed on the Coral I. Abby and Mark took the short hike while Sarah and I took the long one. The shoreline was festooned with sea lions, including a nursing mother and baby, and marine iguanas. It was iguana mating season, so the males were colorful – turquoise and red with black spots – while the females were a more subdued red and black. Both sexes of the marine iguana on Espanola Island, geologically the oldest of the Galapagos Islands, were more colorful than their counterparts on San Cristobal Island.

Lolli led us to nesting Nazca boobies. Like their blue-footed cousins, they lay their eggs on the ground. The Nazcas like to nest near a cliff that overlooks the ocean. The cliff of Espanola Island had a large colony of nesting Nazca boobies. We saw many baby boobies (Sarah’s favorite expression) - fledgling Nazca boobies. An occasional blue-footed booby stood alongside the trail. Also lava lizards and iguanas.

Lolli became excited when we came upon a group of three fur sea lions, a sub-species with longer fur, thicker necks and bigger heads than most of the sea lions. A rare sight, a good day, she said. My favorite sight was the Soplador blowhole, a fissure in the volcanic rock that would shoot water up to 27 meters into the air when a big wave came in. I don’t remember ever seeing a blowhole before.

The afternoon was dedicated to swimming and snorkeling from a beautiful white sandy beach at Gardner Bay on Espanola Island. Abby and I tried snorkeling, but found that her mouthpiece was too big and my mask was too leaky. We swam instead, bouncing up and down as some rather large waves came in. Rick from Madison found a skeleton of a beached whale that had been laid out above the high tide line.

When the time came to leave the beach, the waves were tossing the Zodiacs around. The boats were beached stern first, to allow people to climb over the low end. As I was one of the first aboard, Heine, the German guide,

asked me to sit in the bow, adding some weight up front to keep the Zodiac from flipping. I had a wild ride up there, holding on to a couple of ropes like a cowboy on a bucking bronco. I could see the waves coming in, so I knew when each was going to hit and could brace myself accordingly. In between waves, people from our party slowly boarded the boat, stepping across the transom, which normally was frowned upon as being too close to the motor and its sharp propeller. Finally we were all aboard and pushed away from the dangerous beach for the much quieter ride back to the Coral I.