Day 3 in Galapagos - Floreana

We woke up this morning and took a 2 hour boat ride to Floreana Island. On the way over, we saw some dolphins swimming by our boat, and we also stopped for another snorkeling trip at a big rock in the ocean.

We weren't seeing much while snorkeling, so the guides were telling us that we would just head back to the boat soon, when someone started yelling "Shark!" at the top of his lungs. We didn't get over to him quick enough, but there was an enormous whale shark underneath him that was bigger than our boat. We did get there in time to see a baby whale shark following after the mother though. And the baby was also about 10-15 feet long. It was so big that the parasite sucker fish attached to its back were almost as big as a juvenile regular shark.

We were apparently extremely lucky to see these, as whale sharks normally swim very deep, and aren't usually around the areas that our tour took us. Our tour guide told us that he has lived in the Galapagos for 15 years, and this was the first whale shark he had seen, so he was extremely excited.

After the excitement of the whale shark, we boated the rest of the way to Floreana, which is a small island with only about 100 people living on it, and features black sand beaches. The town is so small that they don't have an actual dock, so there was nowhere for our boat (which wasn't very large anyways) to let us off. We had to take zodiacs from our anchored boat to the small dock. As we were waiting on the dock for the second zodiac trip, bringing our bags, we got to see our first Galapagos penguin, who was just swimming around playfully right by the dock.

Behind our hotel, one of the people from our tour group found a giant tortoise in an enclosure. We asked our guide if that was legal, and he said he would check into it, because it seemed a bit shady. But while we were back looking at it, she came over, probably asking for food, so Kate fed her a flower.



The rest of our group went on a hike after lunch, but we were pretty tuckered out after 2 days of long hikes plus snorkeling, so we stayed behind to take a nap.

Our room was right on the black sand beach