Día 3-¡Feliz Pacua!

Hola.  Today is Sunday March 31st and it also happens to be Easter.  Suprisingly there isn't much mention of the Easton bunny, rather lots of marine iguanas, sea lions and Nazca boobies.

Today we experienced a variety of activities: snorkeling, hiking and relaxing on the beach with many more sea lions that we saw yesterday. 

First at 8:00 we attended a debriefing about kayaking and snorkeling int the Galapagos Islands.  Again, lots of rules.  At 9:45 we took the Zodiac to the rocky island Española (Gardner Bay).  As I mentioned yesterday it is the world that Charles Darwin visited in 1835.  When we arrived we were amazed to see hundreds of lobos marinos (sea lions) pleasantly sleeping.  We made a wet landing onto the shores and the lobos marinos remained in their locations and weren't disturbed by our presence.  We spent a little time their getting used to our snorkeling gear but didn't see too many fish in the waters.  This was mainly a practice for Monday where we were going to have a deep sea snorkeling experience.  After a couple of hours on the island, we headed back to our ship and got ready for lunch.

At 3:00 we departed the ship for a dry landing at Punta Suarez which is one of the richest wildlife locations in the Galapagos.  We took a slow 2 mile hike on rocky volcanic rock and we saw the following: lobos marinos, iguanas, piqueros de Nazca (Nazca boobies), iguanas, mockinbirds and the famous winged albatross which has a wing span of 8 ft wide.  We were fortunate to see the albatrosses since this was the first siting for 2013.  They come back to this island for nesting purposes.  We returned to the ship at sunset 6:00 pm.

Before dinner at 7:30 we had a recap session and briefing about Monday's activities.  After dinner the photo instructor and naturalist gave a presentation on using your camera.  Then to bed at 9:30 for an early wake up call at 5:45.