dolphin day ...

there's a map of the galapagos islands.... isabela is biggest, but not the easiest to get too, and not the most populous ... santa cruz is more of the "main" island ... baltra, where the biggest airport is, is a tiny channel away from santa cruz ... i believe the islands at the top of the map, aren't meant to have anyone step foot on them ... folks who go there, are divers and stay in the ocean and on their boats for the most part ....

that's a close up map of santa cruz ...do you see santiago? it's big ... i don't believe it is inhabited .. not sure if has ever been .... it is made up of two overlapping volcanos .... so lots of the land is just old lava flows ... still just rock .... but right next to it? to the east ... do you see bartholome? it is a tiny island... that's where we went on our first boat ride ... it is the farthest we went from santa cruz ...

 the boat ride out to bartholome was awesome ... we mostly sat on the bow of the boat ... enjoying the sunshine, the breeze, the distant islands, and conversation with our guide, alejandro ...

here's a pic of sophie at the bow of the boat ... straight ahead is daphne major ... one of the islands i read about before i traveled ... one group of scientists live there ... no one else is meant to go there ... and that is home port for them while they are studying the darwin finches on the next island over, daphne minor ...

 alejandro was explaining the islands that we could see in the distance ... telling us about what lived on each ... many of them he's never been on because no one goes on them ... they are being preserved ....
he told us that sometimes they see dolphins ... not usually though ... and moments later? dolphins!.... he pointed at the sea in the distance and we could see dolphins ... they seemed to be racing to us .. in fact, they were! ...

when the dolphins first got to the boat, sophie and i were the only ones in my family up at the bow ... she and i waddle walked all the way to the bow ... alejandro REALLY wanted us to sit down ... be careful!! ... but we both stood there kind of leaning over a bit to hold the low railing ... and right then, a dolphin jumped out of the water ... and HIGHER than sophie's head ... if we'd had our wits about us we could have reached out and touched it ... or at least taken an extraordinary photo ... instead? we squealed!! we laughed... we shouted ... really, we just squealed ... it was amazing...

 ... our squealing brought others to the bow .. including the rest of our family .... we had a ten minute dolphin show .... with dolphins jumping and gliding and swimming as they seemed to be drafting with our boat ....

 at one point there were four dolphins, packed like sardines, side to side, drafting on my side of the bow ... the kids said there were four more on their side ... so eight dolphins lined up and leading the way to bartholome ....

 we've seen loads of dolphins in hiltion head .. in florida ... but somehow this was different ... more private .. more remote ... more just for us ....

 i think that's santiago island out in front of the kids in that pic... from a distance, bartholome looks attached ... but there's a small channel separating bartholome from santiago ...

tomorrows blog? bartholome ... that one island has three or four or five days of blog worthiness ...