The Northern Shore of Isabela Island…
Primitive environment that encloses lots of unknown or undiscovered facts was the scenario where today once again and for several weeks in a row we had an encounter with a large pod of common dolphins. This pod consisted of at least 700 individuals. It is obvious that they are here because the productivity in this section of the East Pacific keeps being high. The encounter was an emotional one and even though the dolphins were not as active as normal, their smooth motion along the surface of the ocean created a sense of serenity in all of us who witnessed the encounter.
The excitement was not over after the marine mammals left us and pretty soon as we were crossing the equator. The young explorers on board the National Geographic Islander experienced an encounter with King Neptune himself. Neptune and his pirates (certified by the International Association of ambulatory pirates under the services of King Neptune) were surprised by the intrusion of all these kids within his domain. But the impasse was solved in a rather diplomatic way and soon after, Neptune was posing for the cameras and chatting with the young explorers.
The snorkeling was outstanding especially as we were delighted by a symbiotic relationship performed by a bunch of king angel fishes cleaning a turtle that pleasantly stayed suspended near the bottom. Also our attention was captured by a very confident flightless cormorant that, going several times very deep, came each time to the surface with a delicacy – once a moray eel, another time with a frog fish, but invariably the emerged creature finished being a snack for the endemic bird.
In the afternoon the surprise came as we experienced the spring tide of the first equinox. Punta Espinosa looked very small due to the extremely high tide. However, we delighted ourselves by sitting on the ground near a couple of playful young sea lions and admiring the unorthodox elegance of the cormorants which were more abundant this week with respect to past ones.
Tomorrow the northern shore of Isabela Island will be far away but the impressions that we will get from the Galápagos will for sure be as impacting as those we had today.
