Galapagos Day 1: North Seymour Island

Diane: We finally made it to the Galapagos, arriving at the Baltra airport. Since I was one of the first to board the bus and I didn’t want to sit on the bus for half an hour waiting for the rest of the tour group, I decided to go outside and take some pictures of the landscape surrounding the airport.. I was hard-pressed to find something picture-worthy. It was just too arid and run-down. This was definitely not one of the natural wonders of the Galapagos.

Our first excursion was to North Seymour Island.

We were there to see the frigate birds. We found them roosting in tree branches. Many of the males had their red throat pouches fully inflated.

TM had a low blood sugar while we were in front of one group of frigates. Dad and I waited with him for his blood sugar to rise. We watched and listened to the male frigates as they repeatedly blew up their pouches and then made a rattler noise by clacking their beaks against the inflated pouches. Evidently, this is how they show off and attract females. With males and females perched together, they looked like a mass of black feathers.

Before we got to the frigates, we saw our first blue-footed boobies. Their upper bodies were much like other sea birds. But their feet … Not only were they bright blue, like they are in their photos, but they were pretty big.

We watched as a mother fed her young booby. She took several minutes to regurgitate the food, which turned out to be a whole fish. The juvenile excitedly lunged for it, but the mother changed her mind, swallowed the fish again, and wouldn’t open up despite massive pestering.

And, before we got to the boobies, we saw our first land iguanas. A male sprang into view followed closely by another male. They were moving at high speed, their bulky bodies heaving from side to side. And then they were gone.






They are normally fairly slow moving. Our guide, Rod, said that one of them must have said something really bad to the other to make them run so fast.

And then there were the sea lions. They were lounging gracefully along the sandy shores of the island. They seemed smaller than the sea lions I’ve watched off the Oregon coast. But they were so much closer. We had to walk around some of the nursing pups.

The folks that came on shore just before us, watched as a sea lion gave birth. We have a very observant cruisemate, Hannah, who noticed something odd about the sea lion and let her guide know so that the whole group could watch. It only took about 20 minutes (yes, I’m jealous). The young sea lions are called pups, which seemed odd, since they are marine animals, don’t have legs, don’t fetch balls or frisbees, and definitely don’t eat out of the dog bowl. But after I took a close look at their faces, they did seem just as cute as dogs and I wanted to pet them.

As we walked down the steps to head back to the boat, we came across two seagulls that were very interested in each other. Although, we had to head back, the group after us saw them getting more intimate.

I saw an extraordinary number of animals in their natural environment during this first excursion - animals that don’t exist anywhere else on earth. My parents visited the Galapagos 25 years ago on their own boat. Although they loved the visit, they did not have a guide and were limited in the animals they were able to see. My Dad said that he’d seen more wildlife in these first couple of hours than he had during his entire first trip.

Calliope: Our first day on the boat was great. We got off the plane, gave our sizes for snorkel gear,

picture
Me wearing my bought-at-the-last-minute-cheap-o hat
giving my sizes for snorkel gear.

took a bus to a dock where we then went for our first pongo ride. We boarded the ship and were immidiatly given help taking off our lifevests, and offered cold clothes to refresh ourselves with. This first class service surprised me, and I realized that I could get used to this. We then went to the “Discovery Lounge where we were offered drinks and watched the Captain’s presentation. Later on we chose which afternoon activity we wanted to do; My parents, TM and I, and Ace all chose the high intensity. Grandbird chose the low intensity pongo rige, since whe was exausted from the plane ride. My dad and I were in the same group for the high intensity walk. On our way to the island, I took many pictures of the animals which our naturalist explained to us. It was a very nice walk, and I enjoyed it.