During the night the boat went to Suarez point on the island of Espanola. I did feel a little ill, luckily my mom had benadryl which can be used as an anti nausea medication (I checked on epocrates, since I recalled that Dramamine is a closely related cousin to benadryl).

We had a little landing step on this beautiful beach

And no sooner did we step on this island when we discovered that the path has tons of marine iguanas on them!

They were all out sunning in the early morning – and just everywhere! You had to be really careful where you stepped because it was hard not to step on them.

When we got to the sandy part, there were tons of sea lions just hanging out. Didn’t mind us coming through, barely even reacted.


For someone who loves wildlife and animals (me!) this was incredible!! My mom is also a fan of animals and she and I were completely astounded. It was as though we were somewhat invisible because none of the animals ran away or anything. It was too cool for words!!

My mom just taking it all in…

I could have just spend hours watching – there was so much wildlife! Birds, crabs, sea lions, iguanas, lizards… I was always ending up last in the group because I just was trying to take it all in and get some good photos!!

There were these brightly colored crabs (Sally Lightfoot) everywhere – the babies were black and pretty skittish so I don’t have a picture of them, but the adults were pretty!


When the momma crab lays her eggs, she opens up her bottom part… and amazingly she was doing this and I captured it!!

(click on the pic if you can’t see it, I labeled it on flickr)

Here’s the other tour group going through so you can an idea of what it was like. We had a guide with us always who had lots of interesting facts to share.

I had someone who told me the amazing thing about the Galapagos is how different all the islands are. This was really the case, if you recall the other post Santa Cruz had a lot of desert plants. This island had more brush, low bushes kind of feel.

Next we came across the start of the albatross nesting area. Albatross are amazing birds – they can fly to the artic. That’s a long trip!! They are pretty big too!

Many were sitting on the nest.

This was our path

Kind of bumpy!!

Then we came to these beautiful cliffs

We sat there for a while just looking at the many, many birds flying around. It was incredible.

Here’s an albatross flying

These two albatrosses were having their first date!

Their mating dance was of course a little odd, but with a name like albatross I think it’s expected. They would clack their beaks together like in the picture, then raise their heads up high – sometimes make some wierdo noises… hope they have a little egg now :)

Another bird flying

I was kind of conservative here because I realized that I had left my camera battery charger in Quito. Panic!! Luckily, someone else had a cannon and kindly lent me the camera battery charger. I have two batteries and one of them is a higher capacity than the one it comes with – but still.

An albatross pair

After watching all those amazing birds we walked down towards these cliffs

There we saw some of the most famous birds from the Galapagos, the blue footed booby!

Another day we go to their nesting grounds, but a few of them had shacked up here as well.

Here’s a baby – or a chick ?

There were also another kind of booby, the masked booby

They were all fine with us walking through, taking pictures!

There were just birds everywhere, hanging out. :)

Here’s a bird ready to compete with Wolfie, catching a stick.

And then we walked back to where we started from.

Can you see all the wildlife in this pic – crabs, iguanas, a bird?! Crazy!

And that was the amazing Suarez Point!!