Day #5 - January 8th, 2018: Endless forms most beautiful

Greetings from the Galapagos! I am writing this blog entry from the island of Santa Cruz at the end of day #5. Please allow me to update you about our 5th day of the trip, a day filled with beautiful creatures.

We began the day with our latest start of the whole trip: 9AM. Most days we've been meeting by 7AM, so everyone was quite glad to have the extra time to sleep in and relax after our somewhat grueling hike of yesterday. Everyone in the group has been so great about embracing the experience and staying focused on our mission. In fact, I think I may need to encourage the students to be a bit more adventurous at night, to take in the local culture while we can.

Our day began with a bus ride to a nature sanctuary. We walked along a wooden plank walkway while our guide Marlon taught us about the habitat and ecosystem. Here we were able to observe the native flamingos, as well as the usual iguanas (which are much more abundant on all of the islands than any of the realized!):

We walked across the street to a stunningly beautiful beach. We watched iguanas swim and fight for territory, pelicans dive, and bright red/yellow/orange/black crabs dart along the pitch black lava rocks:

We all could have stayed at that beach all day! But instead, we drove across the island back to the pier where we first arrived.

 We boarded a small boat to take a tour of the bay and surrounding small islands:

As we toured the area, we saw several creatures that were on our list of targets for the trip, such as the Galapagos penguin (the only species of penguin that lives north of the equator) and the famous blue-footed boobie:

The wildlife was pretty amazing, even from the boat. We soon landed on the small island of Tintoreras and were immediately greeted by a sleeping sea lion:

We followed paths through a truly unique landscape of black lava rock dotted with white lichen backed by green sea and blue skies. I've been a lot of places in the world, but I've never seen anything quite like this!

We visited sea lion nesting areas, and viewed a channel in which local black-tip reef sharks gather for rest:

After boarding the boat, we motored out a short way and donned our snorkel gear for our final underwater excursion of the trip.

We snorkeled for over an hour and were not disappointed by the abundance of fish, sea stars, urchins, lobsters (including a blue one) turtles, and countless other species:

It was our longest and best snorkel of the trip! After boating back to the island, we quickly showered and changed in the hotel and then walked for a nice local lunch (featuring some wonderful sour orange juice and dessert). We then backed up to bid goodbye to Isabela (which was, I will confess, my favorite island).

We boarded the speedboat for a 2 hour trip to Santa Cruz:

We arrived in the late afternoon to the main city in Santa Cruz, which is the 2nd largest and most populated island in the Galapagos. We checked into our hotels and had an hour or so to "stimulate the local economy" (i.e. shop for souvenirs) before enjoying a nice local dinner and, as usual, an early bedtime.

Thanks for reading! Although minor injuries are accumulating (sunburns, scrapes, blisters) everyone is fine. The group is getting along splendidly. Everyone is busy writing and completing their work. It's a great group!