Remember this from our arrival?

It’s known as Kicker Rock. The Spanish name is the Sleeping Lion; I have no idea why the English and Spanish names are unrelated. Tim and I did a day trip there. It’s an amazing place, with cliffs that not only plummet down to the water but continue straight down into the depths below. Exciting just to see the formation and the sea birds on and over it, but the real treat is snorkeling around it. Three ocean currents meet at the Galapagos – a warm one from Panama, that helped us get here quickly, the cold Humbolt current that comes up the coast of South America, and the deep ocean counter-current that flows opposite of the surface current that will push us toward the Marquesas soon. That confluence leads to great abundance of sea life, as nutrient-rich cold waters mix with the warm. In fact, swimming today the water mostly felt cold (we wore wet suits), but there were many pockets of much warmer water along the way.

Snorkeling next to a sheer wall, with the sunlight shining on the many colors of the wall, plus zillions of fish…quite an experience! Sorry I have neither underwater photos nor the poetic abilities to convey it. Tranquil sea turtles amble by below, while sea lions dart by inches away (sometimes scaring the dickens out of you, when they approach from behind and suddenly appear next to your face!), in the depths a few sharks (not people-threatening ones, though one of our group did spot a hammerhead), colorful fish, and if you dive down 10 feet a school of fish so thick it almost seems solid, all while frigate birds are soaring overhead. With minimal supervision (a guide who would point out what he saw, if you could hear him while snorkeling) we swam around the perimeter for an hour until most of us were exhausted as well as awed.

I do have photos of the rock and the birds on/around it…

And surprising in its familiarity, a great blue heron!

We went to a beach where I swam with a large sea turtle.  The water was only 4 or 5 feet deep.  The turtle ignored my presence just a couple of feet away, as it dove to feed on the bottom, and surfaced to breathe.  I don’t do underwater photos, though, so no images for y’all of the turtle.  But there were iguanas and, of course, sea lions…

The Galapagos are famous for their finches, which were one of the species (actually they evolved into 13 species on the islands) that got Darwin thinking about why/how they had developed different beaks (adapting to the foods they were eating).  Also I find it rather amazing that a mating pair of finches somehow made it to these islands in the first place.  Recent “invasive species” aside, only animals that were blown 700 miles off course, or that could live for a long time drifting (perhaps on a downed tree) across in the current, live here.  Tortoises yes (they can go a long time without fresh water), frogs no (amphibians cannot last long without fresh water), for example.