Floreana Island

Today, we had to lift our heads from the pillows even earlier, as our boat back to Santa Cruz (25 $) already left at 6am. Well – Ecuadorian time. We could have slept a little longer…

Via telephone, we had a one-day trip to Floreana organized (75 $). Due to our delay we arrived late back at Santa Cruz, a boat full of tourists was already waiting just for us. I felt a little weird, but only until I fell asleep again. *g*

Even though Floreana was the first inhabited island, it is the least inhabited one these days, due to a natural fresh water shortage. Around 100 persons live there, amongst them the Wittner family, a pretty well-known German family that has been living there for several generations.

After waking up on Floreana Island, we started to make first friends, hopped into a truck and drove into the interior of the island, towards some hills. It started raining, but no one cared. We had to hike some 300m uphill to reach a Giant Tortoise exhibition. Totally stupid thing: Some dumbhead had decided to move 23 giant tortoises here – a place which they had never inhabited naturally, and which was even too cold for them to reproduce! I was not too excited, as I had seen happier tortoises before on Santa Cruz. Well, other tourists obviously hadn’t been there yet…

Next stop were the pirates caves, with an Easter-Island-like entrance warden.

The caves themselves weren’t too impressive, I was hungry, and so not too unpleased when our tour guide announced that we’d head down to have lunch now. We passed by at the only fresh water spring Floreanos have, had a sip (it obviously grants you a long life!), and went back to where we started at.

Lunch was alright. After visiting “Playa Negra”, the black beach for like 2 minutes, we were promised a brilliant snorkel experience nearby. For Sarina and me, it wasn’t for the animals – more fish, more sea turtles, another Manta Ray. Honestly, I don’t understand that – we just had seen these stunning animals once a day ago, and it already felt like something totally common. Weird. Well, the other group members enjoyed the hour or so we had in the water, and so did we. I can’t deny that it was still exciting to try to spot as many turtles as possible. :) And Sarina was happy to finally have a great picture snorkeling with one.

But well, as we embarked the yacht again to head home, I wasn’t too sure if the investment into our only guided land tour had been really worth the money. Another reason why we organized the rest of our program by ourselves.

Right after we had touched down again in Puerto Ayora and had brought all our luggage to Hotel Elizabeth once again, we met up with an Argentinian dude who had been on the Floreana trip as well to discover “Las Grietas”. A water taxi brought us to the other side of the harbor, from where we started a half an hour hike through incredibly silent nature.

Las Grietas is nothing else than a canyon filled with water, which gives you the opportunity to swim in ice-cold water, go for some rock jumping or enjoy snorkeling once again – should you have brought mask and snorkel. We hadn’t.

So we swam a little, watched 10-year-old kids jumping down from hair-raising heights, jumped ourselves (from like 6m, whereas those kids went up to around 25m!) and finally decided to leave this nice place again, early enough to still find home by sunlight.

The maybe best part of the day was a delicious dinner with two guys from the boat tour that we had right at the pier of Puerto Ayora, consisting of bread, cheese, yoghurt and cake. Sometimes it’s the “normal” things that make life happy. It was Sarina’s last night on Galapagos (so far).