Galapagos-Isle Floreana

Mel
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Wed, nov. 23:  This morning we awoke to the barking of sea lions. We were anchored near the island of Floriana.  We took our rubber boat to land, and we went to the "post office", a place where ships left mail, and you are supposed to look at it and pick out ones addressed to places near your home.  You are supposed to hand deliver the mail, but I could only find 2 from Minneapolis, Minnesota, so I took those to mail back later.  There are a lot of stories about Floriana, people have mysteriously disappeared from the small village there. 

post office
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On the boat ride back from the post office we saw 2 sea turtles mating in the water, which was interesting.  They paid no attention to us, we were able to get about 5 feet away.  Also saw herons, pelicans, blue-footed boobies (a type of bird) as well as numerous sea lions.

We had spaghetti for lunch and after lunch Mel and I amused ourselves dropping strands of spaghetti over board to the small fish that clustered around our boat.  The fish eagerly slurped up the spaghetti, I imagine they thought it was worms.

mom & babe
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Snorkeling was in a sunken volcano called "Devils Crown" but the waves were rough & I decided not to go.  Everyone who went said it was pretty good snorkeling, and water was clear way down to great depths.

Later that day we went to a beach that had green sand.  Actually it looked kind of olive-brown to me, but when you looked close there was a lot of little green stones in the sand, called Olivine.  These had been spit out by a volcano apparently.  We walked by a salt lagoon where there were many pink flamingos.  Flamingos do an odd little dance in the water, that is so they can stir up the bottom, and stir up little organisms which they strain out with their beak and eat. 

mating turtles
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We walked through stands of white ghostly bare trees, and found out they were not dead, only waiting for the rainy season when they would leaf out and bloom.  We came to a white sand beach where sting rays like to rest.  The waves were crashing in higher then usual so the sting rays were hard to see, but we did see a few.  I didn't walk in the water, but several people did.  One had to be careful not to step on a sting ray, or they could sting you.  We also had to be careful of tiny little jelly fish that were washing up on the shore.  They could sting like a bee or worse if you touched one.

pelican
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During the evening I started reading "The Historian", a book about Vampires.