AM: Urvina Bay
5:30 Wake Up
6:00 Breakfast
7-8:00 Wet landing - long walk
To See:

• Uplift Zone
• Land Iguanas
• Giant Tortoises
• Flightless cormorants
• Marine Iguanas
• Land birds

Swimming from the beach
PM: Elisabeth Bay
Panga Ride
To See:

• Mangrove Lagoon
• Sea Turtles
• Rays
• Sharks
• Galapagos Penguins

The sea looks so calm here and the sunrise was beautiful, clouds tinted with a brilliant edge of sun. We could see all five volcanoes of Isabella up and down the island. We hope to see tortoises in the wild here, a rare sight for most tourists since they exist in so few places and in such few numbers. I do not understand how we slaughter creatures, especially the ones so much older than ourselves with so much to teach us.

We woke up and had breakfast at 6:00 am, and pulled into Urvina Bay around 7:00 am, only to see another boat there ahead of us. When we finally made landfall, the other group had started the trail that we had planned, so we decided to do our route backwards. From our beach landing, we traveled along the coast until we came to a spot with two flightless cormorants doing a "dance" related to their mating, in which the neck is outstretched and they swim around each other, making an "oooo!" sound. From there we went through the uplifted area, looking at the uplifted coral, then searching for a land iguana. We found one in the shade of a "poison apple" tree, bright yellow head and scaled in the typical ideal of a dragon/dinosaur. We saw a couple more on the trail from there, and many burrows. Right before we made it back to the beach, we met up with Greg, Thalia, Herb & Hillary, who had found a giant tortoise resting under the shade of a tree. The wild variety here on Alceda are the dome variety, to help them work through vegetation, as compared to the saddle-backed variety (such as Lonesome George at the Research Station). After such a long hot walk, we were all ready to jump into the water when we returned to the beach, which we did.

The boat ran all night and as we ate breakfast, we were still heading to our destination. Upon arriving, we walked along the beach to avoid another group and within a few hundred feet, came across a bush with the very rare dark-billed cuckoo, a Galapagos Mockingbird, and a pair of ground finches-all in one place!

We walked along the rocky beach, which was covered in rough lava rocks, and saw some huge marine iguanas, sneezing salt from their nostrils. Marine iguanas evolved from land iguanas and dive for algae. They come onto the rocks to heat up, digest their food, and sneeze the salt from their bodies out their nostrils.

At one stop, Thalia spotted a dead penguin. Since the Charles Darwin Research Station had been looking for a dead penguin specimen, our guide collected it in a plastic bag (it later ended up in the freezer on board).

Nearby, we got to see the aquatic mating dance of two flightless cormorants. These birds have lost their ability to fly, and they dive for their food (cormorants are the birds that Korean fishermen use). They have residual wings which, I imagine, will eventually disappear, evolving away. During their dance, they swim around each other in a kind of tango, with small leaps up into the air with their upper bodies. I think this was just amazing and rare to see.

We then turned inland and it got even hotter-we measured around 105°F, we think. After a bit of a walk, we began to come across big male land iguanas, like giant yellow dragons, resting under the greenery. They had big arms, like heavyset men with wet shirts. We even saw one eating leaves and all our cameras confused it-it charged me and then darted away.

Our walk ended with getting to see a tortoise in the wild. This one lay underneath a tree, so I was not able to get a good photo. But we could watch him, as he rested and looked at us. As I crouched quietly after almost everyone had gone down to the beach, he closed his eyes to sleep. I think they must know what has happened to them, at least subconsciously, knowing that they are vanishing, that their young are killed by rats, that their eldest were hauled off in boats by the tens of thousands-at the very least, that mates are harder and harder to find. I felt sad for the tortoise under the tree....

We swam while waiting for the panga, then lunch and a nap.

We returned to the San Jacinto and had lunch while the boat moved south to our next landing site on Isabella. Following a brief siesta, half of us went snorkeling, where we saw Galapagos penguins on the ledges of the rocky outcroppings. In the water were schools of angelfish and surgeonfish, as well as a bright blue guppy size fish and its adult stage, a large (foot long) fish with iridescent blue spots. We returned to the boat, changed into dry clothes, and all of us went for a panga ride through the mangrove lagoon of Isabela Island. Therein we spotted the sea turtle, both underwater and one female resting on the surface in the roots of a mangrove. We also saw a spotted eagle ray, as well as a large unidentifiable gray ray. Oh, yeah, before we got to the lagoon, we observed the concurrent feeding pattern of the sea birds, wherein the penguins would feed at the bottom, making the fish rise to the surface where the boobies and pelicans would make quick work of them. It was a strange site to see: bobbing penguin heads, dive-bombing boobies, and water-crashing pelicans. In the lagoon, we saw roosting pelicans in the mangroves as well as a few plaintive penguins. Outside the lagoon, we circled two small islands in which the penguins were at the water line, the boobies on ledges in the cliff walls, and the pelicans roosting in the trees.

I skipped the afternoon snorkel to draw and sit on deck. Then we were all off in the panga to cruise the mangrove lagoon. How odd to see lava rock, mangroves, pelicans, penguins, and sea turtles all in the same place!

Another wonderful day-can this get any better? Saw the following birds today:

• Flightless cormorant
• Galapagos Penguin
• Magnificent Frigatebird (& Great)
• Striated Heron
• Great Blue Heron
• Dark billed Cuckoo
• Galapagos Mockingbird

The Galapagos penguin is the third smallest penguin in the world and the only one to live at the equator (one colony is even north of the equator!). They mate for life and we saw pairs often. We heard singles calling across the lagoon for their mates, a mournful cry that seems surprising from these birds. In the water, we saw sea turtles and rays and many pelicans in the trees.

Greg's lecture was on cetaceans, what types we were likely to see during the trip, including the possibility of spotting Sperm, Baleen, Minke, Humpback, and Orcas. He told an anecdote of swimming with dolphins, to be surprised by the sudden appearance of the Galapagos shark, the only one to be feared in these waters.