Kathy has become a believer: spend your birthday on a trip someplace exotic….it does not get any better than that!! Again after a leisurely breakfast and coffee we set off on our next adventure and the lecture last night came in handy today. We hiked up a series of steps passed multiple lava formations. Seeing the landscape around was amazing and was more awe inspiring thinking about the fact that someone 100 years ago probably looked at the same landscape seeing little or no changes. How many of us can say the same thing? The landscape changes so little as it is a very arid part of the Galapagos and has little erosion or change. Dave pondered about the age of the wooden steps. The odds are that they see very little weather that would cause rot or decay.
Afternoon brought snorkeling off the dingy for Dave while Kathy opted to be lazy on the boat and enjoy a chance to just chill and read a book. Dave saw some more white-tipped reef sharks, a couple of manta rays, and hundreds of starfish including red ones, bright blue ones, and “chocolate chip” starfish! He even managed to find a 4-legged starfish, which he wondered whether it could still be called a starfish since it was not in the shape of a star? G was fortunate enough to swim with a large sea turtle, a dream event that has eluded her in her various travels to date.
The afternoon brought us again in touch with our hiking boots where we strolled along the fields of lava and admired the artistic element that nature seems to create almost effortlessly. The landing at the lava fields started off with a “bang” as we got to see two penguins looking for their dinner. The walk across the fields of lava looked difficult and tiring, but instead the solid field of the ground made it seem effortless. Though, a few of us fell in a “hole” and had to be rescued!! Okay it was prop but made for some fun pictures. The walk across the hot rocks was very hot as the sub absorbed into the black rocks. A welcome respite was another snorkeling adventure in the cool waters of the (…. ) ocean. We saw so many colorful fish swimming by us in the water that it was like watching a swimming rainbow.
It was soon time to go back to the boat, have a glass of wine, enjoy the next lecture, and celebrate the last little bit of our day. We say celebrate because today is Kathy’s birthday and the crew made her a cake, sang her happy birthday, and joined us in the festivities. It was a great way to cap off a most excellent meal and a nice ending to an extraordinarily fine day.
The evening saw us sharing a drink and chatting amongst ourselves. Prity (Rikky) is excellent at getting a conversation off to a rousing start, from asking about what we would bring to our Survivor tribe or what makes us grumpy. You do not realize how pretty tough the questions are until you have to come up with something to either add or benefit the tribe or evaluate what pushes our individual buttons. We did wonder what would be her next question for us?????