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The rest of the Galapagos! Predominantly sea-dwellers! But first, other stuff.

Our guide Luis removing a bee stinger from a fellow traveler’s arm. Her arm was swelling up and Luis calmly plucked a giant thorn off of a bush and picked out the stinger. Then he pulled a different leaf off of a different bush and squeezed the leaf contents on the wound. By that night the swelling was gone and the little booboo was almost completely healed. It was amazing.

A photo of the big yacht we were on during our time in the Galapagos.

The trail left by a marine iguana on his way to the ocean.

Some dead marine iguanas. As tempted as I was I did not take home their skin or bones. You need to respect the nature there and I did even though it was a struggle.

A stunning cliffside. Many of the animals we saw were clinging or perching on this cliffside.

A small grotto where pirates would hide their booze and other plunderings.

A rock formation that looks like an elephant’s head.

A plant making an effort to grow in the lava field. Nature is so great that way, always trying to shove life into inhospitable places.

Remember when planes had the “no smoking” light-up sign. I noticed that there is a new message in its place. The times, they are a-changin’. Not that that’s a bad thing, just a thing.

Okay, back to the animals I encountered. We came across a small island that that had masked boobies on a tiny blob of an island in the middle of the sea. There were other birds hanging out on Wee Blob Island but they all flew away in a panic as soon as a hawk landed. The boobies went nowhere, I guess because they were so much larger than the hawk. He was no threat to them. My niece Drea got some terrific shots of the boobies and the hawk existing in each others’ spaces.

Frigatebirds! You’ve seen pictures of the male frigatebird a bunch of times. It’s got a big red air sack on its chest that it puffs up to attract the ladeez. I also learned that the frigatebird doesn’t really hunt for its food, it hassles other seabirds until they barf up the fish they just caught and the frigatebird eats that. Frigatebirds are douches.

A shark! I saw several sharks on this trip but they were while I was snorkeling so I couldn’t take pictures of them. The only one I could get a photo of was this guy. They were all small white-tipped reef sharks. Very cool.

Booby sex! That sounds faaaaaar more interesting than you would think. We went to a plateau where blue-footed boobies were dancing and mating. They didn’t seem to mind that we were there. (Don’t tell the boobies I said this, but I don’t think they are super-bright.)

Crabs! That are not Sally Lightfoot crabs! We saw a hermit crab who I loved.

And some ghost crabs who I also loved. I love crabs, I really do. I love how delicately they eat and how they scuttle and their weird eyestalks that look like exclamation points. They are great.

Swallow-tailes gulls! They are like the tuxedo seagull to our jeans-and-a-tshirt-seagulls we have back here. I thought they looked beautiful. Luis told us that they are the only nocturnal seagull.

Galapagos fur sea lions! You may think I am repeating myself, but these guys are different from regular fur sea lions. They are smaller and they have a shorter, pointier snoot. They were almost hunted to extinction because they are so so soft and furry, but thankfully they are coming back. They still don’t like people, so they basked far away from us instead of coming up close and being all inquisitive like the fur sea lion.

An oyster-catcher! We saw one on a beach. They look like they have not slept in quite some time.

And the brown noddy! It’s a small, rather plain bird, but I liked it. It had subtle color changes that the camera couldn’t seem to catch.

Those are all my Galapagos pictures. Here are three to close out this truly magical experience.

Next entry: the last few days in Ecuador and then… done.

More awesome beasties from the Galapagos! But first, plants!

In keeping with the weird and rough landscape, the flora is also weird and rough.

For example, this hibiscus-type flower with stabby leaves.

Hairy finger trees.

Chestnuts maybe. Or 11th century maces. I have no idea.

A shrub made entirely of pain.

There are prickly pear cactuses everywhere. There was one growing in the middle of street.

I guess they drive around it.

When the cactus doesn’t have any thorns it doesn’t look too good.

However they look terrible with their thorns and whatever that crust is so it’s a bit of a lose-lose for these cactii.

Finches! I know they are important and they have different beaks and that shows they make the natural selections, but to me they just look miffed and surly.

Here’s a great picture my niece took of a plump yellow bird in the foreground with finches in the background.

We visited a tortoisium (I seriously doubt that is its real name, I came up with that). Since humans introduced rats onto the islands the tortoise eggs are at risk of being eaten, so the eggs of the various tortoii are rescued and brought here to hatch. The tortoisium was created to prevent the same fate as Lonesome George. Lonesome George was the last of his kind and could not mate with any other type of tortoise so when he died a few years back it was a sad day. His body was shipped to the Museum of Natural History in New York where he will be mounted and put on display some time in the near future.We visited where he had lived.

When the wee toi-tois reach the size of a lunchbox they are returned to their respective islands because once they get that big they have no predators. We saw many ones almost lunchbox-sized. They looked like little old grumples.

You can appreciate how different the types of tortoises are. There are the very round ones I saw shortly after I arrived, but there are also the saddleback ones. Their shells are flatter and they have a large lip at the front.

Sometimes you just gotta lay with all your limbs sticking straight out.

“Uhhh, you lookin’ at something there, Bud? You wanna start something?”

But the best thing we saw, possibly the best thing from the whole island experience, was meeting Donatello. When we were looking at a model of a tortoise egg (fun fact: you should not rotate tortoise eggs the way you would with chicken eggs, so when they are found in their little burrows information is written on the top of the egg and that always faces up) when I asked if there were any brand new baby tortoises we could meet. The keeper said there was one, born a month ago named Donatello. We were not allowed to touch him because we might give him mainland germs but we cooed over his tiny angry cuteness. So tiny. So angry.

In keeping with the theme of animals who look disinterested and consumed with ennui, land iguanas!

And finally for today, flamingos! Yep, they’re there. Here are some flamingos. The brown pointy things in the foreground are foraging ducks’ butts.

Here’s another one.

And another one. They were sparse but all over the place if that makes sense.

Next entry: all the sea creatures. Crabs, birds, birds who eat crabs, and penguins.