Galapagos Day 12

This morning’s 8am landing was at Punta Cormorant on Floreana Island.  This landing allowed us to wade ashore from the Pangas to a beach on one side of the island and walk over a low hill to reach the beach on the other side.  The main features a juvenile flamingo who seems to be almost commenting to the audience as an aside sotto voce. 

The semi-palmated plover and the juvenile blue footed booby were also taken at this stage of the day.

Returning to the Beluga for 10am, there was just time for a quick coffee before we had to get our wetsuits on ready for the morning’s snorkelling trip to the Devil’s Crown.  This is a circular (crown shaped) rock formation off-shore, that was subject to some quite strong currents.  The downside of the strong currents were the fabulous variety of fish to observe, including a white tipped shark.

Back on the Beluga once more, a hot shower brought the body back to a reasonable temperature after the prolonged swim.  Then it was time for lunch (a much shorter affair than usual, as we had an appointment at the Floreana Post Box at 1pm).  

The post box is a barrel on a stick, into which one can post a card (without a stamp), in return for taking a card from the barrel and posting it onwards at your own cost upon your return to your own country.  It will be interesting to see when (if ever) the card that I posted to Cathy today arrives!

Onwards then to Puerto Villasco Ibarra, the capital of Floreana, and a trip up into the hills in a Chiba.  The Chiba is a form of open sided bus - please see the extras.  You don’t get doors windows or even seat belts, but as the bus only manages about 15mph on the local roads its not too much of a problem. We were going to see the the home of the first Galapagos resident — an Irish pirate Patrick Watkins who lived there in 1807.  In the 1920s Friedrich Ritter, a German doctor, arrived with his female companion Dore Strauch, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, and set up home at the same spot. Ritter was a naturist, philosopher and a doctor of holistic medicine.  Aiming to set up a new eden for himself and Dore,  Ritter removed his and Dore’s  teeth and replacing them with stainless-steel dentures to avoid any dental complications in their new paradise.  Unfortunately Dore lost hers in a difficult landing on the island, so they had to share his thereafter.  He was a vegetarian, but she wasn’t so you can imagine the complications at meal times!

Our guide gave us a long and interesting (but very sad) tale of their lives together, and those of the Wittmers and later on the arrival of a woman who claimed to be an Austrian baroness, with her three male lovers/servants.  The tale involves a large number of unexplained deaths and missing people… 

I’ve taken loads more shots, but I’ve run out of time and the Beluga is now setting sail for a 6 hour journey north from Floreana to Santa Cruz, and we’re starting to rock a fair bit.  

More Galapagos adventures tomorrow …