Trying to increase the penguin population

The ship has sailed the fairly short distance from Rabida Island to Bartolomé Island while we had lunch and a little time to relax after the lunch. And now it is time to go back on land and explore the island. We first go onto the island which is a bit hilly and we across the island.

The island is pretty small so it isn’t a long walk from the beach till we almost reach the center of the island. The walk to the center is along a landscape which looks pretty desert like with very limited vegetation and the wildlife is also limited to mainly just a few geckos hanging around the hill.

We walk up the hill up to a small platform from where there is a great view of the entire island. We can see the hills of the island and enjoy the beach far below us while we relax a bit on the top of the hill.

After enjoying the view for a bit we go back down the hill to the beach. From there we take the small boats and sail along the shore of the island. The island is famous for one special animal – the penguin.

I guess many people connect the penguin with ice and snow in Antarctica – and sure the water here at Galapagos is much colder than you would expect at the equator there are no icebergs around. And I highly doubt there have actually ever been icebergs here during the life span of the current islands which is less than ten million years.

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It doesn’t take long before we see some of the small penguins standing on the rocks around the island. There is also a few swimming around search for fish in the waters of Bartolome. We come fairly close to the penguins so we can get some decent photos of the birds – though it is a bit difficult to keep them in the center of the picture from a boat which keeps moving with the waves of the sea.

And just as we are sailing by a couple of penguin decide the penguin population on the Galapagos is too small so they will do their best to increase the numbers around the islands. We are not the only ones close to the act – there are another penguin standing only a few centimeters from the two busy penguins.

After the male finish his business he jumps down from the female and the two penguins don’t seem too happy with each other. They turn their backs to one another and there seems to be no love left between them.

The main thing on this sail was to spot the penguins and we did see a lot so it was a great success. But obviously there were other wildlife as well. We saw several boobies and there were the ever present sea lions as well. So it was a good little trip we had before we return for the dinner onboard the ship.

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