Friday morning May 31st
We anchored overnight off Isla Rabida. After breakfast we took a short panga ride to
a dry landing on sharp red rocks, not even disturbing a sleeping sea lion on
the cliff ledge by the sea. But we did
startle a sea lion pup at the top of the steps. A pair of Galápagos doves was
perched on a fallen cactus tree.
From the top of the ridge we looked down to a
very red sandy beach with a salty lagoon behind, with a lone flamingo.
This was exciting as I had been really hoping to make my first sighting of flamingos.
The flamingo was
walking up and down in the shallows waving his bill from side to side, sieving
out the brine shrimp.
Apparently young flamingos start out with white feathers and they gradually turn this beautiful pink after feeding on pink brine shrimp in the lagoons.
Meanwhile, on the shore of the lagoon, a mocking bird was very curious about our shoes.
A couple of other tour groups came from another boat moored in the bay, one of the few times we saw other tourists.
We had to urge a large sea lion out of our way so we could cross the dune to the beach.
At the end of the beach was a nursery of
cubs that were very playful; one of them
was searching for his mum for a suckle.
Another mother was suckling twins at
the other end of the beach. Brown pelicans were nesting on the cliff behind the
beach. A large orange sea star and lots of green urchins were washed up on the
beach among the hermit crab holes.
The panga picked us up from the beach and,
after morning tea and a quick change, dropped us in to the same rocky bay for a
snorkel. We had hoped to see marine iguanas grazing underwater on the algae,
but only saw the pale patches where they had scraped the algae off the rocks.
The honeycomb rocks supported lots of colonies of different coloured sea
anemones and a few orange hard corals and hydroids, and long and short spined
sea urchins – the most diverse animal life on the rocks I had seen.
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