BLUE FOOTED BOOBIES!!!!!

I’m starting with a picture of a blue footed boobie, even though it happened late in the day.    But it was so exciting!  Honestly, I could just go home now…..  but more about the boobies later, let’s start at the beginning. 

We got up unreasonably early (4:15am) to catch an early flight from Quito to The Galapagos Islands, via Guyaquil – which makes no sense at all:  Look at a map, Guyaquil is way out of the way, but apparently all flights go through it and pick up more passengers.  

Guyaquil is the largest city in Ecuador, a huge port through which a lot of bananas transit.  It is in the estuary, so not near the beaches and, at least based on our guide’s opinion, not worth seeing.  So we did not – other that this rather bleak sight from the plane.  

 However, right out of Quito, we got a wonderful view of several of the high altitude volcanoes that had eluded us yesterday!  The landing in Guyaquil was a bit scary…   we are all convinced that the pilot almost landed at the wrong airport:  We almost landed, and then he pulled up again very sharply, climbed for quite a while – and then kept going for another 10 minutes, without turning around, and then landed…  No explanation was given.  And we were all fine, so I guess we have no reason to complain….

 We landed on the island of Baltra, one of the many islands of the archipelago and after a 2 minutes ride, boarded our ship, La Pinta.  It is a small ship – only 48 passengers- but quite luxurious enough.  Besides which, luxury is not the point, blue footed boobies are!!!!! 

After lunch, orientation, safety briefing, we went out for our first stroll on one of the smallest islands, North Seymour. 

It is small, flat and mostly dry and barren (it’s the end of the dry season, so everything is very dry), but full of life. 

There are a lot of frigate birds, in all stages of growth, from babies to adults,

 to some trying to mate .  Female frigates, like a lot of Galapagos birds are polyandrous – which is Greek for sleeping around:  They find a mate, have a baby, leave the male in charge of raising the young, and go find another mate  (blue footed boobies do that too).   Even though they are sea birds, and eat fish, frigates cannot get wet.  They are opportunistic predators:  They don't kill, but they steal fish from the boobies and other birds.

 We stumbled upon 2 blue footed boobies doing a very elaborate mating dance.

 It involved showing off how blue his feet are!

 "You looking at me?"

  I think at the end, the male won the female’s heart, but if  he had not, another male was waiting patiently (on the left of the picture on top) to take over.  

We saw several land iguanas, and a small marine iguana – tomorrow, we are supposed to see hundreds of large ones!  Also ran into sea lions, including very cute babies. 

As we came back on the ship, the sun itself put on a show…..Tomorrow we are going snorkeling with sea turtles, looking for marine iguanas and flightless cormorants.