Beagle Day Six - North Seymour & Bartolume

Sunday Feb 16th

Today for the first time during our cruise we saw crowds of the most invasive species of all...human beings.  Walter pointed out that the places we are visiting today are very accessible for day tours so there could be crowds.  Also, we happened to land on North Seymour at the same time as passengers from the Endeavor II ship (a 96 passenger National Geographic cruise) so when we walked the loop trail on the islands we saw 4 other groups of ~10 folks each.  I laugh to myself when I see other tourist groups because we all look alike with our goofy hats and cameras.  It’s a wonder our guides can tell us all apart!  A note about the guides here in the Galápagos...they are all naturalists and well trained and most all are from the Galapagos (hiring preference goes to Galápagos residents).  The national park service requires a guide for every so many tourists (I think it’s 15).  There are very few places you can go on these islands without a guide.

Previous to this we’ve mostly been the only group at location...we even had whole beaches to ourselves.  Lucky!!

Ok back to our morning trail adventure...North Seymour is a very small island that you can walk all around in about an hour.  It is one of the top spot in the Galápagos for birding.  We saw tons of flying frigate birds.  While both the Magnificent Frigate and Great Frigate both live on the island, the Greats are the most active this time of year.  Male frigates have these crazy red balloon-like sacks on their chests that fill up to about the size of a volleyball.  It’s crazy to see!  The chests are bright red and I guess the lady frigates just love it because they fly around checking out the males’ balloons deciding who to mate with.  We saw several dozen flying in the air at any given point and as many on the ground.  We saw nesting pairs.  We even saw some frigate chicks.  The frigates were nesting in these scrubbly little trees and build rather large nests to hold their fat chicks for about a year.

We also saw more blue footed boobies.  We even saw some pairs doing their funny little mating dance where the male sticks his face & tail up and shows off his blue feet.

We saw lots of sea lions and land iguanas.  Some of the female iguanas dug holes so they could lay their eggs.

After we got back to the boat we hurriedly got ready to go snorkel so we could beat the crowd to one of our guide’s favorite snorkeling spots.  While we where waiting for everyone else to get ready, Dave & I saw three sharks off the back of the ship!  There were two dark ones (reef sharks) and a bigger, lighter colored one.  

When we snorkeled,  the water was a bit choppy, however it was crowded with loads of fish.  We also saw two HAMMERHEAD SHARKS!  Those things are real odd looking with their eyes on the edges of their wide heads.  And about a dozen reef sharks.  And a whole school of rays.  Wow wow!  Oh and at one point we snorkeled over five scuba divers!  I only noticed them because of the bubbles.  They were about 50 feet down right next to those Hammerheads.

It takes about two hours to navigate to Bartolume so while we motored,  I took a nap on the deck of the ship.  The breeze feels great.

At the next location, Bartolume Island, we walked this neat boardwalk across the Island and up 378 wooden steps to get to a very spectacular (and famous) viewpoint. This island is very unique as one part is like the moon in that it is all volcanic rock that barely has any vegetation yet (some white weed-like plants and the small Lava Cactus is all) and at a narrow point in the Island is a green area (mangroves) surrounded by pretty beach.  And there is a very distinct giant rock called Pinnacle Rock.

After the hike we jumped on the pangas and motored around the shores of the island.  From here we were able to see PENGUINS!  They're such cute little fellows and a real treat to view.  We also saw more pelicans and a lava gull.