It is a new day and we woke up in a new island. Today we visited Floreana Island, also known by its English name Charles Island. This island has a rich human history, visited by passing sailors, mysterious disappearances of temporary residents and the establishments of adventurous visitors looking to inhabit a place that until then only reptiles were capable to survive. However, today we focused on the natural history of this place, which is overwhelmingly beautiful.
In the morning, we started with a pre-breakfast hike on Cormorant Point. This visitors site is divided by two beaches, we disembarked on an olivine beach where we found sleeping Galapagos sea lions, blue-footed boobies and flamingoes! As we continued with the hike, we arrived in a white-sanded beach that is also a nesting site for pacific green sea turtles. This visitor’s site shows how diverse one island can be in such a short distance and therefore how diverse the Galapagos Islands are.
The rest of the morning was spent in the water and shared with playful juvenile sea lions at Champion Islet. On land, this islet is home to one of the four mockingbirds found in the Galapagos Islands, the Floreana mockingbird. In the water, this islet is home to a wide variety of fish such as blue-chin parrotfish, razor surgeonfish, stone scorpion fish, king angelfish, among others, as well as rays, invertebrates and the occasional sea turtle!
After a delicious lunch, we disembarked on Post Office Bay to go back in time and continue with this place’s history. Post Office Bay has the oldest mailing system in the South Pacific Ocean, a wine barrel. Our guests got to be part of a tradition that have continued since the 1700s in which passing sailors dropped of mail for families and friends and collected any mail addressed to a destination they were heading, only to hand deliver that mail.
After Post Office Bay, some of our guests went kayaking around Floreana Island just before sunset time, it was definitely another beautiful day in the Galapagos Island, new experiences, new memories were created and will always stay with our guests and their families.
