What Else Can We Do to the Sea Lions?!

Day 3:
Sea Lions, Albatrosses, & Boobies; OH MY!

Espanola Island was next up for our adventures on the cruise. When we arrived at the deserted beach.. it wasn’t really deserted! The rocks that we thought were scattered about the beach were actually sea lions!! They became the star of the show for at least 20 minutes, while everyone oooh-ed and awww-ed over them and took a million pictures. We started to take some funny pictures with them, like trying to lie down next to a group of them passed out.. it always ended in a scream or two as the lions barked at us to get away from their kids. It was a ton of fun, and one of the funnest things we’ve done!

We ventured about the island and found some Nazca ‘Masked’ Boobies (no blue feet) and some Blue-Footed Boobies. The Boobies did a mating dance, it looked like a sort of sun dance done in circles, and then he would give the girl Booby some sticks. Then, we saw at least 20 Albatrosses. They’re so cute looking, I just wanted to take one home and put it on my farm, they reminded me of a HUGE hen, but cuter! The most amazing thing was standing in the ‘airport’ and watching them fly. They’re so huge, that they need to run and open their wings in order to start flying.. much like an airplane.

Later, we saw some Galapagos Hawks, which looked wicked awesome flying about!


The absolute highlight of our day, was finding a long beach that had hundreds of sea lions basking in the sun. We had 2-½ hours to snorkel in Gardener Bay and play with the sea lions! Snorkeling, I saw a sting ray, two spotted tiger eels, a rainbow fish, needle looking long skinny fish, and a ton of others.. MAGICAL!!!

I can’t even begin to explain all of the things we did with the sea lions, just look at the pictures!!

Oh yea, and Chris saw a sea turtle! (bully)