Well, we have been here a week and have been soaking up the sights and the weird animals.
It is true, there are sea lions on the dock and dozing on the pavement. There are pelicans instead of pidgins on the lamp posts, birds with blue feet, yes blue footed boobies, and tortoise 5 feet across wandering around the fields with the cows. You expect Sir David to step out from behind a cactus and an introduction to the next film clip.
We have kept busy, walked to and swum in volcanic fisures in the cliffs, toured the Darwin center and seen the tortoise captive breeding centre. The sad thing is that without collecting the tortoise 🐢 eggs 🥚 as soon as they are laid non will survive to maturity as there is too much predation from introduced pests. Rats, mice, dogs, cats, pigs, and other animals all brought here by humans like nothing better than to breakfast on tortoise eggs, lunch on hatchlings and dine on immature babies. Until they are about 3 years old they can't protect themselves so the eggs are collected and hatched, the youngsters are kept safe for up to 6 years and then they are released back onto the island they were born on to live wild for the next 200 years. They have to go back to the correct island as each islands tortoise have adapted differently to suit the available food.
We walked along the coast to turtle Bay, saw the evidence of turtles dragging them selves up the dunes to lay eggs but no turtles. We did see the marine iguanas warming themselves on the rocks after cooling their bodies whilst swimming to collect food. We swam along the edge of the mangrove swamps and saw juvenile shark 🦈 who live their first years amongst the roots to avoid being eaten, possibly by mum or dad!
Yesterday we went up into the Highlands, an area permanent wet with rain and explored lava tubes left by magma flowing down hill and the outer layers cooling whilst the inner, hotter areas kept flowing down towards the sea. We also wondered round a cattle ranch where giant land tortoise graze alongside the cows and wallow in muddy ponds to keep cool and drown parasites.
Today we took a dive trip and swam with giant sun fish, turtles, white and grey tipped reef sharks and even caught a glimpse of a hammerhead shark 🦈 in the distance of the deep water off the reef.
Not bad for our first week here. Tomorrow we make preparations to move on to Isabella, the next island on out tour here. Hopefully to an anchorage which is better protected from the Pacific swell and which means the boat will not roll quite so much at night
a week and have been soaking up the sights and the weird animals.It is true, there are sea lions on the dock and dozing on the pavement. There are pelicans instead of pidgins on the lamp posts, birds with blue feet, yes blue footed boobies, and tortoise 5 feet across wandering around the fields with the cows. You expect Sir David to step out from behind a cactus and an introduction to the next film clip.