The Tortoise and the Finch: San Cristobal

We were up and out for our speed boat ride to San Cristobal Island. This is the easternmost island in the archipelago. Our speed boat took us on a drive by of Santa Fe Island which was nice since we could not fit a stop there into the schedule.

Pro tip - always sit on the back row of the speed boat, not on the side benches. Your spine will thank you.

Today we learned how lucky we have been with our guides. Our first stop was the interpretation center, which had displays covering the natural and human history of the Galapagos. Our guide had nothing to say aside from reading the titles of each panel. Outside we walked through the palo santo forest to a platform overlooking the coast; from here we could see that San Cristobal is a significantly different environment from the other islands we have visited. There were more wild flowers and other plants we had not seen elsewhere. We asked about several of these but our guide did not know what any of them were. In fact, he seemed wholly disinterested in sharing any information about anything as he frequently walked ahead of us checking his phone.

From the overlook, we walked down to La Loberia, a beach completely awash in sea lions. Our guide pointed out a great blue heron - informing us, erroneously, it was a lava heron. Here we also saw a group of 5 hermit crabs engaged in a wrestling match of some kind with a 6th crab. It appeared that they were trying to pry it out of its shell. We asked about this behavior, but once again, our guide did not know.

After lunch we went to Playa Mann, another sea lion beach. We were supposed to snorkel here, but we discovered that there was no place to change and time was short, so we decided to skip it and just enjoy watching the sea lions. A large male was vocalizing in the surf and one female was telling another to back off while her baby was nursing. The surf was crashing dramatically on the black rocks that shelter the beach. We saw a few small ground finches and yellow warblers. There were marine iguanas posed attractively on the rocks. Our guide sat in the shade of the life guard hut rather than providing any information.

We got dropped off at the pier and went for coffee and ice cream. While enjoying these treats in a gazebo by the water, one of Darwin's finches came along to put on a show of using his specially evolved beak. He picked a seed pod off of a plant growing around the base of the gazebo, flew up to the railing not 2 feet from us, crushed the pod open with his beak, and then picked the tiny seeds out of it. This process was repeated 3 times while we watched.

After a bone rattling speed boat ride back to Puerto Ayora (we did NOT get the back row) we went for dinner and finished our day with an ice cream sundae creation called the Cookie Monster.