A Way to Remember My Trips: Day 3 on the Samba

Wow I am not doing well at all with writing about our trip! I leave for Paris in 2 weeks so my goal is to have everything from the Galapagos written up by then. My second goal is to actually write about Paris while I'm there! I'll be going alone so I think that will give me more time to blog since I won't be ignoring anyone to hang out with the internet.

Thursday January 26, 2017
Today we were at Marchena Island. On the way there from Genovesa a pod of dolphins joined the boat. They were having tons of fun swimming in the wake. It was awesome to see them having to much fun. There were probably a few dozen of them at least- maybe even more that we couldn't see.

Map showing our navigation to Marchena.

We spent the morning snorkeling around Punta Espejo which I don't have any pictures of. I didn't bring an underwater camera so I don't have any pictures of snorkeling trips where we left directly from the boat (which was most of them!).

Once we were ready to leave the boat we hopped in the tenders and our guide took us into the middle of the pod of dolphins that we saw on the way over. We got off the boats into the middle of the pod and it was probably the coolest thing I've seen! There were tons of dolphins and right when I got in the water I saw sharks and huge tuna. It seems a silly thing to say but everything moved away SO FAST. We were in the water a minute or two then we got back in the tenders to follow the dolphins again. I especially remember the tuna because they were huge and moved very fast. Underwater the dolphins made so much noise. It was really cool to hear them communicating through clicks underwater and zoom past you.

After the dolphin pod moved away we went over to Punta Espejo and snorkeled around the reef. Right when I jumped in I saw two hammerhead sharks! Only a few people were able to see them before they sped off so I feel luck. We saw tons of fish along with eels, turtles and rays. I kept having trouble with my mask fogging but up eventually one of the crew members helped me wash it out with baby shampoo and told me to stop breathing out my nose. Eventually I got it! I am a pretty novice snorkeler but this trip definitely helped me get better.

After lunch we took the tenders over to Playa Negra on Marchena which is a black beach made of only lava rocks. I do have a few pictures below. The snorkeling was in a quiet cove and it was really pleasant. There were fur seals and tons of schools of fish. The cove was really deep and it was interesting to snorkel among all the lava rocks. It was almost a little chilly since the sun wasn't out!