The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

In the afternoon we went for a boat ride around Puerto Egas.

This cactus looked funny growing straight out of the lava.

This galapagos tomato looked even funnier.

This is the first Nazca Booby we saw. He was making a lot of noise.

The rocks were very colourful.

This rock is supposed to look like an elephant. A bird poop covered elephant.

This rock is supposed to look like a monk drinking beer.

Here is a closeup.

Kerri actually thought there was a clearer face on the back.

Here is a closeup.

This is a very large cactus.

On the way out we passed some pretty volcanic craters.

And a swarm of birds.

It was pretty cool.

That night was the only clear night we had for star watching. It was only really good for the half hour between sunset and moonrise.

A few swallow-tailed gulls followed the boat after the sunset, making an awful racket. They are nocturnal and hunt for squid at night. There was a lot of screeching and weird clicking sounds.

The snorkelling in Santiago was the best.

The water was much warmer so we could stay in for longer.

And see lots of fish.

And fishing sea lions.

Which are very cute.

These guys were diving down into a hole so that all you could see was their bubbles until they came up for air.

They don’t usually dive very deep, at least not the ones we saw.

But they are very fast in the water.

And playful.

And curious about us.

This one was chasing and diving around Matt for quite a while.

Kerri kept poking him to get his attention, but he didn’t see it.

Finally Matt pulled his head out of the water and said “what”. The sea lion popped his head out too and sat right behind Matt with this expression.

Kerri yelled “eee ion…eee ion….eeeeeee ion!” through her snorkel.

Then Matt saw him, which is good, because he had the camera.

This is a Galapagos barracuda. They are small and very funny looking.

There were more big schools of fish.

And a big eagle ray.

There were a couple of white tipped sharks too, but the pictures aren’t nearly as good as the ones from SCUBA.

The host found the remains of a dead lobster. The parts looked funny floating back down to the bottom.

Another big school of tiny fish.

This is Kerri and  school of tiny fish.

This is a random red thing Matt decided to take a picture of.

This is a random blue thing Matt decided to take a picture of.

This is a mexican hogfish.

This is a very spiky urchin.

This is a yellow starfish. There weren’t many of these. Most of the starfish were blue or the red spiky ones or the many armed ones.

This is a blenny.

This is an island major . It was unimpressed by the camera.

This is a king angelfish.

This is a female or juvenile mexican hogfish (the male is above with the weird bump on his head).

This is a scorpionfish.

But the best part was the penguins.

They circled by 3 times.

A whole big group of them.

They are really, really fast.

They came shooting by under us while we were snorkelling.

Then they got lost in the bubble and I couldn’t really see them anymore.

But they came back again.

Maybe they liked me as much as I liked them.

Or maybe they just didn’t get enough fish the first time.

But they seemed to be having fun.

And they were very cute.

This morning was a hike on the west side of Santiago through the tide pools.

They were very colourful with pretty blue water and green algae and red crabs.

In one place there was a bridge and a curved section that was empty when the waves went out.

But full when the waves came in, terrifying the crabbies.

We saw a pretty flower.

We also saw one of the “thingies that runs along the beach”.

We saw many marine iguanas.

This one is eating. He scrapes the algae off of the rocks with his teeth.

They use the side of their face to get in close.

Sometimes they soak in the tide pools to regulate their body temperature.

There were lots of galapagos doves. They are kind of pretty, for pigeons.

We also came across a moulting crab. It was foaming to lubricate itself to make shedding easier.

After he will pop out of a hole in the back of his shell.

And leave a case behind, complete with eye covering.

We found a little scorpion hiding under a rock.

He looks much more like a scorpion after he wakes up.

He has to hide under rocks so he doesn’t get eaten by the lava lizards, which are much lighter in colour here.

There were also fur seals.

Fur seals are also sea lions, but they have a different head shape and bigger ears than the galapagos sea lions.

And much more fur, which is why they were hunted almost to extinction.

They are harder to tell apart in the water.

One of the big galapagos sea lions was playing with a marine iguana in the tide pool.

He was holding him by the tail and not letting him swim away.

He kept tossing him in the air and trying to catch him again.

I think the sea lion was having more fun than the iguana. He finally escaped.

While all of the other animals are hard at work, the baby galapagos sea lions are having a nap.

Sometimes they have nightmares about escaping iguanas.