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Galapagos Day 8 - Dive Bombed by Boobies!
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DAY EIGHT
It was the final morning of our trip, but somehow we agreed we'd have the earliest start yet, we set off in the dingy shortly after 6am and we could see straight away that we weren't the first. There were two other little dingies making their way into the mangrove surrounded cove too. Maria had warned us that we might not see very much so we didn't have our hopes up too much.
We passed some Blue-footed Boobies and Brown Pelicans sat on a rock at the opening of the cove. Juan, who was skippering the dingy, soon spotted a family of three Eagle Ray skimming through the water just next to us. We motored into the cove and then turned off the engine and Juan and Maria rowed us to where one of the other groups were staring intently into the shallow water. They moved off as we approached and we got to glimpse the object of their fascination - several White-tipped Reef Sharks of different sizes just resting on the bottom.
We watched them for a while then moved off, we saw a bright Eagle Ray glide passed us and got our first sighting of a couple of Black-tipped Reef Sharks. The cove was deceptive as it looked like a fresh water lake you might find in the south of England somewhere, but then we'd spot the sharks or a Marine Turtle and we'd remember where we were. After the Turtle we saw a few birds, a couple of Lava Herons, a Yellow Warbler high in the trees greeting you with his beautiful song. Apart from the bird song and the sound our oars made in the water it was wonderfully silent.
At least that was until Juan and Maria paused looked at each other and then raced to get the engine started again. We didn't know what was going on until Maria explained that they could hear a large group of Blue-footed Boobies fishing. We weren't really sure what the fuss was about until; we rounded the corner and saw them.
There were hundreds of birds flying in tight packs. When one broke off and decided to drop like a stone, then all of them would follow. Slamming themselves, head-first at high speed into the inky waters they created violent splashes all over the place. The view was mesmerizing. I'd read that they have special air pockets in their skulls to prevent them hurting themselves when they Plunge and now I knew why, it was really extraordinary.
It got even better though. The birds had gathered and looked to be flying off when they suddenly rounded and headed towards us. One or two started to dive right next to us and before we knew it, we were being dive-bombed by hundreds of birds. How none of them ended up in our dingy I don't know, but the noise and splashes were quite incredible. Only a few minutes earlier Jim had been bemoaning the fact that he hadn't been able to capture a Booby hitting the water - now he was hard pressed to miss them. Who can say if it was really rare to witness that, but Maria told us she hadn't seen a show like that with so many birds for two years.
We watched transfixed for a few minutes but then it became obvious that the boat was slowly but surely starting to take on water. We needed to head back to the mother ship. We left the boobies bombing our the other two dingies. Our timing was great as we got to see a glimpse of a large Galapagos Shark swimming out of the cove just ahead of us.
Breakfast should have been a sad event as we were just getting reading to disembark for the last time, but we were on such a high again we really didn't mind. The last eight days had been truly amazing and definitely a highlight of our whole trip. We packed our bags and said goodbye to the crew before bundling into the dingy to be dropped at the bus stop where the adventure began.
When we got to the airport we visited the shop Maria runs with her husband we got her specially designed Galapagos stamp in our passports and stocked up on tacky souvenirs. About an hour before our flight Maria showed us into the air-conditioned VIP lounge and after a final group photo we waved her goodbye. We shared a drink with our fellow passengers and boarded the plane.
Isolde, John and Herman disembarked in Guayaquil for their onward flight to Costa Rica and we said goodbye to Kevin, Brigitta and Pat when we got to Quito. A taxi took us straight back to our hostel in the old town. Having flown in we noticed the altitude a lot more than before and so we just had a quite dinner alone and had an another early night, although we couldn't get to sleep right away as we were just reminiscing about all the amazing sights we'd been lucky enough to see over the last week.
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