The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

This is the only visitors site on Fernandina Island, the youngest and most active volcano in the Galapagos. Eruptions take place every few years.

Some of the lava cactuses had holes where the rice rats had eaten them. They are nocturnal and apparently very cute, for a rat.

The lava lizards here are coloured differently to blend in with the fresh lava.

There were so many marine iguanas.

It was hard to avoid stepping on them.

This little island is actually white ash. Those are all iguanas.

Each big group has a dominant male in charge.

They dig holes on the beach to lay their eggs in.

The eggs hatch into little itty babies, which are really cute.

The grown ups have big claws on their front feet

And their back feet

For clinging to the rocks while they feed.

They bask in the sun to warm up after swimming.

Always facing toward the sun.

The light coloured divot on the top of his head is a parietal eye, used just for sensing light.

They climb on top of each other to warm their bellies.

 

There were also tons of crabs.

As we walked around we came across a number of skeletons. There was a whale with a dolphin head.

And a mummified marine iguana. He was cool because you could see the little forked teeth they use to scrape algae off of the rocks.

The beach was littered with the little pencil spines of the sea urchins.

There was also a chiton shell.

We also saw a number of sea lions.

They were very cute.

There were lots of flightless cormorants preening themselves on shore.

They are really funny looking birds.

And look even funnier walking around.

They have very pretty blue eyes.

And big powerful swimming feet.

Which even they seem to find surprising.

On the way back we saw a Galapagos hawk hanging out on a piece of driftwood.

A sea lion was very curious about it.

Back on the boat as we sailed we spotted a whale. It was likely a wright whale as it had a small dorsal fin. It was too fast to get a picture.