Passengers on this year's Galapagos cruise enjoyed extraordinary encounters with wildlife and nature, both on land and at sea. Our guide, Zet Freiburghaus, shares his experiences from a magical day and photos from the entire expedition.
We wake up in Punta Vicente Roca on Isabela Island, and for the first time since the start of the trip, there’s no landing planned for the morning. Instead, we begin the day with a Zodiac cruise along the steep cliffs. We spot flightless cormorants and blue-footed boobies. Sunfish jumping and breaching the surface, marine iguanas and the shadows of sea turtles gliding below.
Back on the boat, we have 15 minutes to change into our snorkeling gear. Once in the water, we realize we had only seen a fraction of the turtles from our Zodiacs earlier. We snorkel among sea turtles, they are everywhere we look — we all agree there must have been over a hundred of them.
When we return from snorkeling, the ship begins to move toward Fernandina, where we’ll spend the afternoon. After just a short while, we spot a group of short-finned pilot whales swimming quite close to the ship, staying with us almost the entire time until lunch.
As we’re enjoying lunch, the captain suddenly interrupts us with an announcement — there are dolphins in front of the boat! We all rush outside, and it’s not just a few dolphins. There are hundreds of them, and the sea looks as if it’s boiling.
Once we arrived at Fernandina, we jumped back into the sea with our snorkels and masks — this time getting the chance to swim with marine iguanas grazing on the lava rocks and several sea turtles. After a short time back on the boat, we landed right where we had been snorkeling and saw thousands of marine iguanas sunbathing on the beach and rocks.
At the evening’s BBQ on the sun deck, we were all smiling from ear to ear — no one could decide what the highlight of the day had been!
