San Cristobal Island
Centro de Interpretacion Ambiental Gianni Arismendy
Another 8:00 excursion call and another early breakfast awaited us. J. R. opted for some yogurt only, not sure how his stomach would feel, and packed a protein bar in his backpack for later. Our excursion today was to Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, the administrative capital of the islands. The town was founded in the mid-1800s and is the oldest settlement in the Galapagos. It is the second-largest population centre in the islands, home to over 6,000 residents.
We began with a bus ride and short walk to the Centro de Interpretacion Ambiental Gianni Arismendy, or the Interpretation Center. This small center has exhibits explaining the natural processes that formed the Galapagos Islands and focuses on natural history, human history and conservation and development.
Puerto Baquerizo Moreno
We followed that up with a short walk into downtown. The small town beach is reserved just for the local population of Galapagos Sea Lions, and we saw quite a few lounging on the beach and even on the sidewalks. We walked all the way down to the monument to Charles Darwin and his ship, HMS Beagle, and spotted even more sea lions, including some small ones hanging out on the shore. We also came across a large iguana near the public toilets.
After our exploration of a few shops and watching the sea lions some more, we took our tender back to the Flora. Lunch was "Azteca" but neither of us had much of an appetite so we had a few small things and then went back to the room to relax and watch the waves out the window. It was really nice to have the Infinite Verandah and the bed facing the water so we could get some sea air and chill.
Punta Pitt
In the afternoon, we split up again with Janie and several of our friends opting for the tender ride while J. R. was feeling well enough to tackle the long, steep, difficult hike. The tender dropped him off at Punta Pitt, on the northeastern tip of San Cristobal Island. After disembarking onto a small green sand beach, it was time to begin the hike up to a large plateau through a steep gully that serves as a breeding ground for all three varieties of boobies: red-footed, blue-footed, and Nazca.
Our group was greeted by a bachelor colony of sea lions lounging on the beach and then Mariuxi started us on our climb through the brush. We met our first frigate birds as well as blue-footed boobies on the climb and then finally came face-to-face with our first red-footed boobies of the trip, sitting in the trees right in front of us. The rock steps proved to be rather treacherous but once we reached the plateau, we had beautiful views and more changes to spot the boobies. We even spied some goats in the distance. Goats are not endemic to Galapagos and the government has been working to eradicate them, but on populated items such as this one, that is more difficult as they are bred as livestock by the locals.
As we walked back, we had a blue-footed booby come right up to us on the trail, moving ever closer to Mari as she talked with us, not caring at all about the humans in the path. We made it back to the beach and no one was really in a mood to swim, so we boarded tenders and came back to the ship.
Dinner and Silent Disco
Tonight's drink of the day was a red-footed booby. J. R. skipped this one as it seemed like it would be too sweet, but Janie and the others had a few. Then we all went as a group to dinner with Matt and Tuesday joining us, Caren and Jean and Rusty and Sandy for dinner.
We had both been complaining about the lack of entertainment on the ship as the nightly movies were old BBC documentaries that no one seemed to watch. So we were excited when we saw a Silent Disco on the schedule. Unfortunately, the music selection was not very good. They had found some Spotify or Apple Music house music playlist for one channel with techno-rap songs while another was purely Latin and the third was a mix of what we guess they thought were dance songs. It seemed more like a party for the crew than the guests. But we stayed and danced for awhile, flipping through songs trying to find decent music. With a guest list of people between 50-80, we would have thought they would find some 70s and 80s dance music.
