The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

Today we walked on a new lava flow from 1897.

It was all ropy pahoehoe formed from slow flowing lava.

The layer on top cools and solidifies, but the lava underneath continues to flow and push it so the skin wrinkles.

The surface is very rough and hard on hiking boots.

Some places you can see something got in the way of the flowing lava.

This one was a tree. You can still see the texture of the bark in the imprint.

This is where giant gas bubble blooped up.

The inside of the bloops is all spikey.

Sometimes the lava flowed out after leaving a thick skin, leaving giant holes.

This is where the new lava flowed over land formed by a much earlier eruption.

There were giant cracks in some places.

The older parts of the island have things growing on them.

But because this lava flow is only a bit over 100 years old it only has a few pioneer plants growing in it.

There wasn’t much living here, but we did find a lion.

And two dodos.

And a few crabs near the shore.

And, of course, a locust.

There was pink lava.

A rainbow formed while we were hiking.

This is Matt holding up pinnacle rock. He refused to put any effort into it. He’s lucky it didn’t fall on him.

In the afternoon we went for a boat ride around Puerto Egas.

This cactus looked funny growing straight out of the lava.

This galapagos tomato looked even funnier.

This is the first Nazca Booby we saw. He was making a lot of noise.

The rocks were very colourful.

This rock is supposed to look like an elephant. A bird poop covered elephant.

This rock is supposed to look like a monk drinking beer.

Here is a closeup.

Kerri actually thought there was a clearer face on the back.

Here is a closeup.

This is a very large cactus.

On the way out we passed some pretty volcanic craters.

And a swarm of birds.

It was pretty cool.

That night was the only clear night we had for star watching. It was only really good for the half hour between sunset and moonrise.

A few swallow-tailed gulls followed the boat after the sunset, making an awful racket. They are nocturnal and hunt for squid at night. There was a lot of screeching and weird clicking sounds.

The snorkelling in Santiago was the best.

The water was much warmer so we could stay in for longer.

And see lots of fish.

And fishing sea lions.

Which are very cute.

These guys were diving down into a hole so that all you could see was their bubbles until they came up for air.

They don’t usually dive very deep, at least not the ones we saw.

But they are very fast in the water.

And playful.

And curious about us.

This one was chasing and diving around Matt for quite a while.

Kerri kept poking him to get his attention, but he didn’t see it.

Finally Matt pulled his head out of the water and said “what”. The sea lion popped his head out too and sat right behind Matt with this expression.

Kerri yelled “eee ion…eee ion….eeeeeee ion!” through her snorkel.

Then Matt saw him, which is good, because he had the camera.

This is a Galapagos barracuda. They are small and very funny looking.

There were more big schools of fish.

And a big eagle ray.

There were a couple of white tipped sharks too, but the pictures aren’t nearly as good as the ones from SCUBA.

The host found the remains of a dead lobster. The parts looked funny floating back down to the bottom.

Another big school of tiny fish.

This is Kerri and  school of tiny fish.

This is a random red thing Matt decided to take a picture of.

This is a random blue thing Matt decided to take a picture of.

This is a mexican hogfish.

This is a very spiky urchin.

This is a yellow starfish. There weren’t many of these. Most of the starfish were blue or the red spiky ones or the many armed ones.

This is a blenny.

This is an island major . It was unimpressed by the camera.

This is a king angelfish.

This is a female or juvenile mexican hogfish (the male is above with the weird bump on his head).

This is a scorpionfish.

But the best part was the penguins.

They circled by 3 times.

A whole big group of them.

They are really, really fast.

They came shooting by under us while we were snorkelling.

Then they got lost in the bubble and I couldn’t really see them anymore.

But they came back again.

Maybe they liked me as much as I liked them.

Or maybe they just didn’t get enough fish the first time.

But they seemed to be having fun.

And they were very cute.