July 25, 2018 – July 27, 2018

We had decided in Quito, after much discussion, that we would not make the side trip out to the Galapagos Islands.  Friends we had met on the road had offered to watch Piper for us if we went, but we decided that if we did go we wanted to do it on a 7 or 8 day cruise, plus maybe spend some time on one of the islands, and that it could quickly become a 10 or 12 day trip.  That’s a long time to leave Piper, and we would have to find a place to stash the truck.  In addition, the trip would easily cost or $8,000 Canadian dollars, and when Derek calculated how many kilometres we could drive for that much money (a lot!), we decided that the Galapagos would have to wait.

We did however book a day trip to Isla de la Plata (Silver Island, so named because there have long been rumours of pirate treasure on the island but more likely because all the bird guano on the cliffs looks like silver in the right light), about 40 kilometres off shore of the small fishing village of Puerto Lopez.  The island is known as the “poor man’s Galapagos”, and the trip to the island (about 1.5 hours each way), with snacks and lunch, the possibility of seeing whales, an english-speaking guide, and snorkelling, cost us about $40 US each….pretty good deal.

We arrived at the island after cruising through some pretty sizeable swells with only one distant whale spotting.  We were greeted by maybe ten or fifteen turtles that were swimming just below the surface.

We went ashore and after a brief talk about the rules of the island, our group was lead inland.  The guide stopped to show us a wren.  “Great, a wren,”, I thought, immediately becoming bored with the tour.  Next he stopped a pointed out a rat in the bushes.  Okay, well that little guy was kind of cute.

He showed us a bush that has white berries on it.  When these berries are crushed, they become very sticky.  He told us that school children use these berries in place of glue for school projects.

We came to a lookout where our guide started to give us some information about the Blue Footed Booby.  He told us that we would come upon some birds that were nesting in the middle of the trail, and told us that we would need to keep 4 or 5 metres from the birds.

And sure enough, moments later we saw our first Blue Footed Booby.  And at that exact moment, I fell in love with the birds.

Some interesting facts about the birds.  They dive into the ocean when hunting for fish from heights of up to 100 metres and can be going almost 100 km/hour when they hit the water.  To protect their brains from the impact, their skulls have built in “air bags”.  The island has no fresh water, but the Boobies (and probably all sea birds) ingest the salt which is then moved through their blood stream to a pair of salt glands above their eyes.  The dense, salty fluid is then excreted from holes in the nostrils, runs down grooves in their bill and then is shaken off the beak by the bird.

Females are slightly larger than the males.  As the birds age, their feet become paler.  Females prefer to mate with young males, and part of the mating ritual involves the male strutting around the female, showing her his beautiful blue feet.  He then offers her some nesting material, displays by pointing his head to the sky, and, if all goes well, the mating happens.  We were lucky enough to witness the entire dance and the actual mating.  Our guide said that although he sees the courting dance often, he has only seen the actual mating about 5 times in 20 years.

The females lay up to three eggs, about 5 days apart, and both the male and female take turns sitting on the eggs.  Usually, however you only see a Booby with one chick.  When the first hatched chick is about 5 days old, its younger sibling hatches.  If the first chick is healthy, it will usually chase off the younger sibling, who, without the benefit of the nest and mom or dad, has no chance of survival.  The same thing then happens when the third egg hatches.

Further on in our walk we came to the area of the island where the Frigatebirds congregate.   The male has a red throat pouch that he inflates in mating season to attract the females.  I was excited to see the males with their inflated pouches, as I have a really early memory of looking at a photo of a male Frigatebird, maybe in National Geographic, or on some wildlife cards that had come with a box of tea my parents had bought….not sure, but I remember being fascinated  and a little disturbed by this huge red balloon bulging from beneath the birds beak.

We returned to the boat, headed to another part of the island, and after lunch on the boat we snorkelled for about 30 minutes (aren’t you supposed to wait an hour after eating to go swimming?).  The water was COLD, but we did see some nice schools of fish, and some decent coral.

We were still hoping to get a better look at some whales.  The humpbacks that live in the Antarctic during feeding season make their way to the warmer waters off the coast of Ecuador and Colombia to give birth.  The baby whales do not have enough of a fat layer to survive in the Antarctic waters, but after a few months of drinking the mother’s milk in the warmer waters near the equator, they have built up enough blubber to make the trip back south.

We did manage to see some whales from a distance on the ride back to shore, but it was impossible to get a photo.  When the boat was in the bottom of a swell, the waves were probably 2 to 3 metres high, so you would see a whale, then you would see a wall of water, and when you came back on top of the wave, the whale might or might not still be visible.   But we saw multiple breaches, tail slaps and dorsal fins, and that always makes us happy.