Cruise Day 3

In the morning it was the same routine. Our morning hike was to Bartolome Island, which was a huge lava flow. It was really rocky and unsteady which made the hike a little more tricky. it was really interesting, but you had to watch where you stepped because some of the rocks that you thought were solid and steady, were not.

On the morning snorkeling tour I felt pretty good, there was nothing scary seemed to be happening. We were snorkeling from the panga again, which is not my favorite, because if there is something scary, you can´t escape, unlike if you were snorkeling fromt he beach where you can always book it to shore. Well I am doing my thing looking at the pretty fish and creatures when somebody yelled shark! I think to myself screw this (more explicit terms were used) and turned around to get back on the boat. When i turned around, everyone and their grandma were swimming toward me...INCLUDING THE SHARK! Freaked me out! It was about a 6 foot white or silver tipped reef shark. i could tell because I was that close. however i lived with no bites but a near heart attack.

We went back to the boat for lunch and then went and walked up a giant crater. with a great view. This was on Santiago Island. i had to literally step over sleeping sea lions to make it to the trail. that was pretty cool. it was very prety, but a long way up. Many and many stairs to the top. When we came down, the sea lions or lobos as they are called here were still unwilling to move, so once again we had to step over them. The we were off to the beach on Santiago to snorkel.

Snorkeling again, I was not sure if I was ready to get back in after the experience this morning, but i decided to try. I was on the beach and could get away if I needed to. I took my underwater camera with us this time. It was so worth going back into the water. We were snorkeling with penguins and a sea lion and a marine iguana. It was so much fun! Some of the penguins were busy mating, but the others were playing with us in the water. The sea lion was so much fun. He would swim straight at your mask and then right when he would crush into you, he would turn. She did circles and was extremely playful. i hope the pictures come out. I also missed my real camera pictures of the penguins because I didn´t take it out in the panga because I was affraid it would get wet. So I really hope the underwater pictures come out.

When we got back on board we had dinner and chatted some more. Then jean Carlos came running through the cabin screaming dolphins. We followed him outside and a pod of dolphins were lining the boat. it was amazing. they were so close i thought we might run over them but they would speed up and splash in front of the boat everytime. i wanted to go and get my camera, but I was sointo them and didn´t want to miss anything. I am hoping that someone will give me copies of their pictures because it was so amazing. We also had a farewell cocktail that night for the people who were on the 4 day cruise and our guide. Lots of gossip came out of that tomorrow night. This was another spectacular day!

01/27/08