This morning we visit a new island – Fernandina. The zodiac driver is quite skilled at navigating us through the shallow rock to land on the concrete platform.
Here lives the largest population of marine iguanas.
The rocks are literally littered with them to the point that you have to be careful where you walk.
They sit there bathing in the sun totally unphased as masses of people walk past them.
With big number of animals also means you find a few dead ones.
Littered in amongst the colony is many a dead iguana sitting on the rocks where it took its last breath.
These guys are pretty cool, having evolved from the other land iguana with the ability to swim and breath under water aswell as the ability to live on land.
In one of the shallow rock pools there are a stack of sea turtles just pottering around.
There are also quite a few sea lions on the shore.
We spot one mother and a pup that must only be a few days old.
It wants to check out the new visitors but mum calls it back and it reluctantly plods back over and sulks on the rocks.
There’s also quite a few of the red crabs around that looks awesome against the black lava rock and the green seaweed.
There’s 2 lots of snorkeling today and the water is extra cold with the current.
There’s a few penguins that dash around through the group.
The water is full of turtles and I really want to go in but my sensible head wins over and decided that I don’t want this cold coming straight back so I sit it out and have to be satisfied with the cool pics and videos that John is able to get.
As he moves around he swims from turtle to turtle, just bobbing along with the current.
The afternoon is a zodiac cruise in search of Blue Footed Boobies.
There’s stacks of crabs.
Flightless Cormorant
and rocky outcrops to explore.
The evening before sunset is the “Crossing the Equator” party. We’re all invited onto the bridge with the captain to watch the gps tick over to 0 degrees.
We spend most of the night in the northern hemisphere and cross back to the south early hours of the morning while we’re all asleep.