Day Thirty Seven: Day 3 in the Galapagos

Today was another relatively early start. Woke at 6, had brekkie and headed for Post Office Bay on Floriena Island. This place was pretty cool. It's an old pirate post mailbox, dating back hundreds of years. It was the place where the first inhabitant of hhe galapagos lived, an old Irishmen. You can open up the box and see what mail is in there. There's some really old mail left in there as relics, but mist is peoples postcards. We had a look thru, to see if there eas anything close to us or in Aus, so we could pick it up and deliver. We put our mail/postcards in too, hopefully they make it. It's a cool concept!
We walked up the island further and ventured down into a cave. The cave was full of saltwater, and for the last half we were able to swim in it's dark depths. Quite a cool thing to do. Was completely dark (apart from a few peoples head torches). I felt like i was in The Goonies, living the dream!

After that we hopped back in the dingys and went marine wildlife watching. We spotted many cool things. The lucky thing was we were able to see a couple of galapagos penguins, which shouldve migrated from the islands by now.  So we were really lucky.

We also saw lots of tortoises too- really cool animals. Along with these we saw many many sealions, iguanas and birds, which you start to take for granted. They're everywhere. I still like the sealions though, they are so so friendly, one was performing for us, circling the boat doing flips.
We then went ashore looking for flamingos but were unable to see them as they had migrated away. So we headed down to the beach of the island and walked amongst the sting rays. Pretty cool. You have to shuffle your feet in the sand rather than make steps so you don't get their barbs. It's a scary and weird feeling as they brush over your feet.

The beach on this island was pretty cool, one side had really brown sand, the other really white, and if you dug down about a foot you got olive green sand, volcanic matter made it really green. Quite cool to see.
There were so many turtles on the shores of this beach too- really cool. This was the one thing I really wanted to see and we were able to.
We headed back to the boat for lunch and a bit of a rest. We were going snorkeling this arvo so we needed to be ready.

We got in the dingy and headed for a group of small rocky islands called the devils crown. The snorkeling here was breathtaking. I finally started to enjoy snorkeling. I had different gear and it made it much more comfortable and enjoyable. Was amazing swimming around with so many colorful fish, turtles, reef sharks and brown sharks. At first the sharks were scary, but I kinda felt safety in numbers. Besides we were told they were vegetarian sharks, they only ate from you palms!

We snorkeled for over an hour but it only felt like 10mins- was so fun!
That afternoon we cruised to Santa Cruz Island. The 6hour trip was spent mostly relaxing and sipping beers in the sun on the deck. The main highlight though, was the dolphins we saw. This was SPECTACULAR! Five dolphins were swimming alongside the boat, and three then road the wave at the front bow of the boat. They rode along with us for 5 to 10 minutes. Was such an incredible site.

Weve been really lucky with guides too, the naturalist guide knows so much. He has a very funny spanglish accent when talking to you in English. He reminds me of the butler in the movie Mr Deeds. Im verry verry sneaky sir...may i touch your feet... you know, that guy!

The sun then set on our Galapagos adventures. We watched the sun rapidly go down and headed inside for dinner. We were treated to a farewell cocktail before heading off to bed.
Another fun filled, energy sapping day in natures playground.

these are turtles btw - buggers dont surface that often

VIDEO OF THE DOLPHINS