National Geographic Lindblad Trip - Floreana Island

From Ecuador

Photos here.

We started the day with a pre-breakfast landing on Floreana Island. There were visited a "post office". This post office had been used for two centuries. People have put mail in a barrel and as other ships passed by they took the mail if it was addressed to someone in their area. I mailed a post card to my Aunt Karen. It has since been hand delivered to her in Connecticut. It arrived before I even left Ecuador. I picked up two post cards for Pagosa Springs because I am hoping to go up and visit a friend who lives up there. Even if I don't I am sure that someone in her family will be heading up that way and can take the cards to her and she can deliver them to the Pagosa residents.

After breakfast we (Huichi, JJ, Erica, Brody, and I) headed off to snorkel off a volcanic cone called Champion Islet. It was a little choppy and Brody stayed in the boat until in calmed down a bit. We did an amazing drift snorkel. This time the sea lions were playing all around us. It was incredible. We topped this off witha glass bottom boat ride.

We had lunch and then Huichi and I went out in the kayaks. We saw a number of sea birds on the rocky shore line. In addition we saw a group of rays swimming along the surface and one or two turtles swimming in the bay.

The day was not yet done. We went for a short walk across the island looking for flamingos. Brody used Dad's camera and took video. Unfortunately, we saw no flamingos. The turtles were nesting and we had to be very careful where we walked. We did find some baby turtle shells. They were not the fittest or luckiest and did not survive. It was a very pretty walk.