Today was a "tuff" day, not tough, but tuff. We enjoyed Bartolome Island very early in the morning. It's basically a tuff (compacted ash) formation. And in the afternoon we visited Puerto Egas with its impressive "sugar loaf," another example of ash formed by an explosive eruption, when lava is cooling off with sea water. Darwin saw the same cone in 1835, as he spent most of his time on James island -- 9 days of his 19 days on land.
Geology is fascinating, but today we had it all: Galapagos fur seals, recently born baby California sea lions, juvenile oyster catchers and at the very end of our walk... WHALES! For the first time on the Polaris we saw Bryde's whales from the visitor site. There was a feeding frenzy of brown noddy terns, boobies, pelicans, and then suddenly, blowholes of at least 3 whales probably fishing as well in the same area. We don't know if Darwin was so lucky when he was here many years ago, but we certainly were lucky today!
