February 3rd, 2006

RABIDA
I woke up feeling somewhat sick this morning, which unfortunately ahs made most of today not particularly pleasant. But there were still good parts of the day. We started with a wet landing on a beach that seemed part dark sand, part dirt, populated by several sea lions. We walked from the beach up to a little hill and then along a cliff shore. Today was the first that John talked about “Darwin Finches” and suddenly everyone wanted to take pictures of them. Sadly, they are camera shy and no one succeeded. From there we walked to a pond that used to have Flamingos in it, and now has several sea lions instead.
The next two hours were spent on the beach. Erica, Janine, and I walked up the beach, but didn’t find much interesting. We all snorkeled from the beach, though, which was great. After the grumpy male sea lion had moved his barking down the shore a bit, we got in and swam along the rocks. This was the clearest day for snorkeling so far, and the fish and small growths along the rocks were quite pretty. I saw a bullet of a small penguin dive into the water, bob to the surface, and then disappear. There were also several sea lions that swam past us.

SANTA CRUZ – Cerro Dragon
While we were getting ready to go to shore, the “kid” in the crew (probably my age) pushed our panga driver into the water. Erica commented that it was the most she’d seen the driver smile since we’ve been here.
Once on the shore, with a somewhat wet driver, we walked for 1 ½ - 2 hours on trails from Cerro Dragon, a beach on Santa Cruz. There were a few land iguanas and 2 flamingos, but other than that, very little wild life. I was feeling sick again by the time we were halfway through the walk, so I didn’t enjoy it very much. When we went back to the boat I opted out of snorkeling, took a shower, and went to bed. Erica, Janine, and Rob said they got to “play” with a sea lion while they were snorkeling, though.
I got up after dinner and had a small piece of the apple cake that the cook baked for us. He was also very cute and very happy when a couple people asked to take pictures with him. Rob, Janine, Erica, and I stayed up for a few hours chatting. I declined to join in on the rum and beer, but it was a good deal of fun.