THURSDAY, 10 November 2016.

When we woke up, we were still in the bay at San Cristobal. Soon after, we began our journey to Curro Burro (check pic on camera!) where we toured the bay by dingy.  I learned a valuable lesson today – actually two!  Even though I didn’t think I would need my glasses, I did because I could not see the screen on the camera; therefore, I missed a picture of a blue footed boobie while going around the bay.  Second lesson: always take my cap!  Even though it was very cloudy when we left the Coral II, the sun came out later.  I don’t think my head burned but we’ll see. We then went ashore and walked the beach.  We saw many sea lions, some yellow warbler birds, a couple of lava gulls.  As explained by our guides, the animals here have no fear of humans because they have never been hunted or abused by “us”. They pretty much ignored us.

After walking the beach, we returned to the bay where we had exited the water; there I snorkeled for the first time in my life.  It took some practice (at first, I got lots of ocean water in my mouth!), but after I got the hang of it, it was fun but tiring.  Jenny stayed on the beach and waded.

After lunch, we had time to rest then to Punta Pitt island where we hiked up the volcanic mountain to see red & blue footed boobies as well as the other kind (I’ll look up the name later); it is not a color.  Although blue footed boobies are the most common to see in the Islands, the red is more populated but because they live in hard to access areas, they are not seen as much.  It was definitely a difficult hike, as originally told to us by the guides but we made it.  The near death (greatly exaggerating for effect here!) was when we got back into the dingy; a huge swell came up, caught the dingy and turned it sideways.  All aboard at the time got much wetter than we had intended; lucky neither of my cameras got wet.  All survived though and we made it back to the boat.  After everyone was on board, we headed to our next destination, although we won’t have an activity until tomorrow.  Rest and relaxation time until dinner.

Quiet evening after dinner, some time spent on the upper deck after Jenny went to bed, then bed for me.