Every day, our experience in the islands is different. We thought that after the first day things couldn't get better, but the second day exceeded the first and the third day was better still! It really makes us wonder what the next few days have in store for us. Our full day on the fifth largest island started with a spectacular sunrise and an early outing to visit a traditional post office.
This post office barrel was first mentioned in 1793 in a letter by a British whaler named James Colnett. Whalers started operating in the Pacific then, and did so until early last century. They would often be away from home for years on end, and set up barrels such as these so that vessels that were homeward bound could pick up mail to be hand-delivered. This old tradition is carried on to this day, luckily no longer by whalers but by an industry beneficial to the islands: tourism. Several of our guests picked up letters addressed to somewhere close to home, or a place to be visited sometime in the near future, before we proceeded on for a Zodiac cruise followed by our return to the Polaris and a well-deserved breakfast.
The rest of the morning was spent enjoying water activities such as the glass-bottom boat and snorkeling with many young sea lions. During the afternoon's hike we came across beautiful pink flamingos trailing their odd, upside-down beaks in a brackish lagoon, sucking up small organisms such as the brine shrimp. The walk led us on to the "Flour Beach", a favorite nesting area with the Pacific green turtle, and though early for them to nest we came across the first "double-decker" turtles of the year! A couple of our guests adopted habits native to the "endemic" guides on board, and took the walk bare-footed. Though undoubtedly good for the circulation, they ended up with a gait distinctly reminiscent of the courting blue-footed boobies seen just the previous day! This could be a form of adaptive radiation, known to happen particularly fast in the Galapagos Archipelago.
