Galapagos - Finishing Up

One of the unique things we did on Floreana Island was to stop at Post Office Bay. Originally, whalers started leaving mail in a barrel on the beach, to be picked up and delivered to its destination by ships on their way home. The tradition has continued to this day. Post cards are placed in the barrel without any postage, then visitors to the island sift through the cards in order to deliver them by hand. Bill and I found one addressed to someone in Davis, CA that we are going to deliver!

Bill is at the right-hand side, looking through a stack of post cards

As I mentioned before, we took zodiacs to and from the ship to the islands. The zodiac drivers and the naturalist guides wore buffs for sun protection, which we noticed made them look like hijackers.

One afternoon, we finished up our snorkeling, hopped back into the zodiac, and high-tailed it back to the ship while watching a storm approach. Luckily, we never felt a drop of rain!

To give you an idea of just how large the giant tortoise is, we posed near one:

Here's another way to see their size:

One day before snorkeling as we walked on the beautiful beach, we noticed the meandering tracks of marine iguanas.

I found a photo, taken by our naturalist, that shows the unbelievable color that gave the blue-footed booby its name.

Speaking of boobies, I'll finish up the Galapagos portion of our trip with a photo showing our zodiac group (assigned the name "Boobies" -- can you believe it? The other group names were Albatroses, Cormorants, Dolphins and Frigates.) Our ship, The Galapagos Legend, is in the background on the left. Our group consisted of couples from (left to right) New Hampshire; Ontario, Canada; Victoria, Canada; our terrific tour manager from Virginia; England; Southern California; New Jersey plus of course Bill & I. It was a really fun group!