I went to sleep early last night and woke up late today. It felt so good! And I still had plenty of time to get ready for my excursion today. Tintoreras is a shorter excursion than I've been used to. I took my time getting ready. Went to the kitchen to fill my bottle and drank my electrolytes while still in my room, filling my bottle again before leaving. I walked down to the tour office and still had time to try on a wetsuit. They're convinced it's cold here! After getting my wetsuit fit, a couple from Ireland came in, and they picked up the suits they used yesterday. They said the Los Tuneles tour was amazing. I'm doing it tomorrow. They did it yesterday.
Our ride to the pier came, but we were still waiting for a group that was coming in from Santa Cruz, so the Irish couple and I went down to Concha la Perla, which is a little protected cove where people snorkle just off the beach. Not likely to see things I haven't already seen, but the water looked really clear. With my issues, I'm a little hesitant to snorkel alone, even with steps for getting in and out. This is the only down side of solo travel.
When we got on the boat, which was packed (but still with plenty of space), we drove slowly by places, so I just moved my seat from the inside to the back edge where I could get good shots of the blue-footed boobies on some rocks close to our island.
Then we docked and took a walk through a lava field. This island is the lava and collapse of a former volcano. Many of the islands of the archipelago are formed from volcanos. Some are still active. We were met by the usual sea lion sleeping on a bench.
As we walked, we saw multiple marine iguanas. Apparently, the babies can't swim yet, so they have to eat what's on the beach. Also, the reason some of them have white heads (or other parts of their bodies) is because they have a gland on their nose that spits out salt and when they're resting together. They get salt spit on them. The white is the dried salt.
People often call this part of the island a moon scape because it looks lunar. The white on the lava tips is not penguin or booby crap. It's lichen in multiple colors, but the white is the most prevalent.
We made it to the end of the path in a beautiful little cove.
Three Eurasian whimbrels were spotted on the beach on their immigration path.
After a nice hike, we loaded back into the boat and went to the snorkeling spot. The guide said we would just be swimming over the sharks and that I likely wouldn't see anything that I hadn't already gotten good shots of. The penguins are mostly on the other side of the island nesting and hatching babies, so they aren't likely to be seen. I was bummed, but decided to leave the camera on the boat and asked them to put my backpack somewhere it wouldn't get wet. I just snapped the gopro (all lower case because it's actually a knock off) on my chest, put on my snorkel gear, and went overboard. Since many others weren't using wetsuits, I opted out, too. I'm glad I did. I got hot on the other tour that I wore one, and I was quite comfortable on this one.
There were a few people who had no business in there, especially this dude that dog paddled and kept kicking me in the face. I think he grabbed my hair once. I know he grabbed my arm a few times. I tried to get away from him and finally did – right into a great big green sea turtle! Surprised the crap out of me! The water wasn't very clear here, but it didn't have to be to see this guy! I had to turn and paddle away to keep from running into that great big baby! I was able to get turned back around and point the gopro at him! The film from the snorkel is usually in clips of 30 minutes each, but I've trimmed down the parts that are most interesting.
There really wasn't much to see in this area. The water was pretty churned up and there were lots of people in the water at once. But there was a blue-barred parrotfish.
After we all got settled in, we headed to the tunnel where we swam over the white tipped reef sharks. It was pretty cool. The tunnel is very narrow, so you have to go single file in a line, and I let the others get pretty far ahead of me once I figured out they were churning up the water by touching the sides. In their defense, it was hard to avoid the sides sometimes. I was expecting more sharks, like what we saw by the place where we walked, but it was pretty cool. Besides, being in the back of the pack, if any of them were hungry, they'd probably take the ones in front! But I saw some small fish (food for these sharks) swimming around them, so definitely a good sign. They were mostly in singles or in pairs, but there was one group that was in a pile.
When we got to the other side, our boat was waiting for us, and we loaded up. As we were drying off, penguins were spotted!! One was out swimming and fishing and another one joined after a while. The guides started calling to him. I had been thinking I would have to get with Alethea to see about getting someone to drive me over to the other side of the island to see them, which may have caused me to miss out on the sea horses tomorrow. But I didn't have to do that!! It was a shame that we were out of the water, but it was good that I didn't put the waterproof condom on the good camera because I just ran over to the boat driver and grabbed my bag, getting the good camera out, really kinda being an ass probably by just deciding I was going to get it out right there regardless of whose stuff I was on. But hey, I was really after this penguin!! I did apologize and step back after getting a couple of shots.
Day made! So, back to the dive shop we went to drop off my wetsuit and get reminded that tomorrow is at 7:30, pretty much the earliest except the ferry. I went back to my hostel and got a shower, checked my pictures and started the ones from the excursion uploading. Then I headed to lunch. I still hadn't had salchipapas since being back in Ecuador, and I saw a restaurant that had sign for them. So, that's where I had my late lunch.
While searching for diet coke, I ran into the couple from Boston that was on the tortoise farm with me back on Santa Cruz! We had a good, quick catch-up and chatted for a while. When I left them, still on the hunt for Diet Coke, I ran into a couple of the guys from the film crew that were on the ferry. Kind of a small group of people on this island!
The only place besides the bars (which weren't open yet) that were likely to have one was closed. So, after taking a picture of the cool church in town, I just headed back to the hostel to drink water.
I've made it a pretty good habit to walk by the flamingo lake walking the two blocks between the center of town and my hostel. There were some right up by the fence, so I took pictures from between the slats, getting a lower point of view than on the boardwalk.
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