Cruise Day 1

Quick summary entry here...

• Woke up in the morning in the bay of Rabida Island. We spotted a marine turtle laying her eggs on the beach before slinking back into the water
• Rabida beach is entirely red on account of the iron in the sand
• Saw a cute baby sealion here on land, plus my first glimpse of the famous blue-footed boobies that so many bird-watcher-nerds have been raving on about! Their feet are blue indeed, and they are excellent birds to photograph.
  
• The true gem was when I went snorkling and spotted white-tip reef sharks, plus even a huge MANTA RAY! (I hopefully got some of these on the underwater camera ... can't wait to develop them)
• Later in the day we visited James' Bay on Santiago Island. A lot of the locations (and even street names in Puerto Ayora) have English origin due to the early exploration by the British here. Of course the Spanish names have a priority and it's not unusual for one place to have several different names!
• James Bay was a favourite haunt for pirates to stock up on turtle meat. They also killed hundreds of turtles for their oil, but to be honest there wouldn't have been too much oil in a turtle compared to a whale. What a waste of such a beautiful creature! This is why several species are now extinct.
• James Bay had black sand and an abundance of sealions, including a unique species endemic to this one island that have larger ears than normal, plus they're more fluffy which naturally equals MORE CUTENESS. One caveat though. They're a lot more aggressive and several times when I tried to get close for photos they attempted to charge me in the clumsy (read "cute") way only a sealion can
• While snorkling James Bay I spotted a sea turtle, more white tip sharks, plus a sting ray!
• Overnight we ventured to Isla Bartolomé passing the northern side of Isla Santiago to the east.

Pic of the day:

Rabida Sealion pup