We have to wake up early every morning for breakfast and the crew ring a little bell when it's ready. This morning the bell rang at 7.30am ready for breakfast to be served. We walked downstairs and talked to the other guys, we found out that the new guys who boarded the ship late last night were Australian and they were brother and sister called Ben and Michelle. It's turned into a nice little crew considering it was originally us and 5 ladies. The older ladies are made up of 3 Americans and also two German ladies. We will make an effort to get to know everyone abroad the Estrella del Mar on our week long cruise. The first nights sailing wasn't too bad and nobody was seasick, so that was a good start to the cruise. Hopefully the sea won't get too choppy for the rest of our time here. The breakfast is plentiful and you got a choice of loads of hot foods, and also plenty of fresh fruit. I'm glad there is plenty of fruit, I'll be happy with that if we get that every day as well as other things, it was mostly cooked foods for breakfast, so enough to fuel your busy days ahead. 

Chinese Hat Island

After breakfast, we were ready to visit Chinese Sombrero (hat) Island, so called because the island is shaped like a Chinese hat apparently . It's just off the southern tip of Santiago Island. It's hard to spot this island on a map as it's one of the smaller ones. The shape of the Chinese hat is actually a cone-shaped volcano. Our ship was anchored about a hundred yards from the island, so we had to take the dinghy to get to the shore line. We had to put on our life jackets in the dinghy. To get to the island, it was going to be a wet landing, so we had to land in the sea, so I just went bare foot until we stepped on the white sandy beach. Everybody took off their life jackets and left them in the dingy. It was harder for the older ladies to disembark, so the crew members and Sol helped them out and onto dry land. Once we were all safely onto the island, we saw some sea lions basking in the sun. The island was a beautiful one with a white sandy beach and some volcanic rocks in the near distance. We stayed admiring the sea lions for a while and took plenty of photos and then we went for a walk, where Sol told us about the flora and fauna of the island . We visited a lava tube which had been formed when the lava flows down the side of the volcano, the upper part cools, and the lower part continues to flow below the surface in a tube like form. John and Mark decided it would be a good idea to get inside the lava tubes so we got some photographic evidence of this. While walking around we saw some lava lizards, which live on the volcanic rocks, we saw plenty of Sally light foot crabs which also live on the rocks, a Galapagos hawk from a distance, and more sea lions, including babies- which were so playful and really cute. One of the older ladies fell over on the volcanic rocks, I felt really guilty as I was right behind her and asked of she wanted a hand, but she declined. Luckily, she was ok tho and we all helped her get back up on her feet again. Afterwards, we all walked back over to where the dinghy was picking us up from as we were all going snorkelling.... My first time ever and I was very nervous. 

Once we got the dinghy back to the ship, there was a juice drink and some crips and biscuits waiting for us before we were ready to take the plunge . As I hadn't done snorkelling before, I wasn't going to hire a wetsuit until I'd tried it out first to see if I liked it, as you have to pay to hire the wetsuit out for the week. So everyone got their wetsuits on ready to go snorkelling and myself and John just went in the water with our swimwear on. John thinks he'll be fine without a wetsuit so didn't want to hire one. By the time we were in the dinghy ready to snorkel, panic was starting to set in. I never go swimming at home or even like putting my face underwater, so for me, it was a big deal going snorkelling. I was going to wait until the afternoon as that session was just snorkelling from the beach, but everyone persuaded me to go from the dinghy. I nervously got ready on the edge of the dinghy and let John go in ahead of me so that he could help me into the water. Everyone else who snorkelled had already went in backwards from the dinghy, so I was last to go in. Eventually, when I went down the ladder to get in the water, I got the snorkel ready and put the mouth piece in . John was already snorkelling and was telling me to come on, but I was just swimming with my head above water for now until I felt ready. The water wasn't cold, and the current wasn't strong, so this was the ideal place to try snorkelling I guess. I panicked a lot and kept attempting to go under water but couldn't quite put my head under. John kept telling me it's not as bad as you think, so once I composed myself, I just decided I needed to do it. What was the worst that could happen, if I didn't like it, I could just take my face out of the water and get back in the dinghy. So I took the plunge and dipped my face in the water and looked under into the deep blue ocean, and do you know what, it wasn't that bad at all, and I think i'm actually going to enjoy snorkelling. I saw loads of shoals of tropical fish, just swimming beneath me and it was such a wonderful feeling, to know that I was able to swim under water and breathe through my snorkelling equipment and see these creatures of this mystical place. No place better to start it off than the Galápagos Islands . John kept a watchful eye on me and once he knew I was enjoying it, he could relax and enjoy the experience also. Once I got the hang of it, I was actually really enjoying myself and didn't actually want to come out of the water. I even got to watch loads of sea lions swimming playfully around us, which was something I'll never forget. After about an hour of snorkelling, it was time to go back to the dinghy. Now I knew I liked snorkelling, I'll hire a wetsuit for the rest of the week, John will be brave and won't bother with one. We'll see if the water gets colder, which i'm told it will. 

It was freezing cold once back in the dinghy, I had a towel to keep me warm, so I couldn't wait to get back to the boat to get warm and dry. When we did get back to the boat, there was some hot chocolate and more biscuits waiting for us, so that would certainly keep us warm for a bit anyway. We got dried and dressed and then it was lunch time. We were served up a choice of dishes; lasagna and a meat dish plus plenty of salad and fruit, so we won't be going hungry any time soon . While we were having lunch we started sailing to our next island; Rabida Island, which is distinct for its red coloured sandy beaches. It will take an hour or so to sail, so after lunch you get some free time, so we'll go up to sunbathe on the top deck. The weather is so changeable in the Galápagos Islands and they do not have a weather forecast to predict the weather at all, so hopefully it will stay nice and sunny for us. After lunch, the weather was kind to us, so we did go up on the top deck and sat there for a few hours until we arrived at our next destination. 

Rabida Island

About an hour and a half later, we reached Rabida Island. You could notice how red the sand was, the high amount of iron contained in the lava gives it the distinctive red colour. Rabida bears it's name of the convent of Rabida, where Columbus left his son during his voyage to the Americas. Before we got off the ship to dock into the island we saw many sea birds . In the Galápagos Islands there is not a seagull in sight, which is unusual for me coming from a seaside town where there are thousands of seagulls. Anyway, the seabirds that we saw were pelicans, blue-footed boobies, frigate birds and even the galapagos hawk. The crew rang the bell to call us as they were ready to take us to the island for our hike. This was also a wet landing on the beach and we also had to take our snorkelling stuff with us as we were snorkelling from the beach this time. Once we arrived ashore, there were more sea lions waiting there to greet us. We had to leave the snorkelling stuff on the beach while we took a walk around the island. I decided to hire the wetsuit as I'll be making use out of it snorkelling twice a day for most of the cruise. We also noticed a lot of starfish on the beach, some were the same colour as the sand and blended in well. When the tide went out, a lot of them got washed back into the sea. Sol was calling everyone to hurry up, so we had to go with her for our walk around Rabida island . The whole section of the island that we walked around had the red sand throughout. There were also many prickly pear cactuses on this island which happen to feed bird species including Darwin's finches. We saw more lava lizards, and these ones were crossing the paths that we were walking on, if they feel threatened, they can loose the end of their tails and grow another one. We actually saw one who's tail had been missing the end tip of it. There was another bird species we saw, the Galápagos mockingbird who sings a lovely melody, and one hopped right by us on the ground. 

After the hike, we walked back to the beach to go snorkelling, we had to get changed into our wetsuits on the beach and leave our clothes there, as the dinghy would come back and collect us and our things. This time we had to swim out from the beach to go snorkelling, I found this much harder as you had to try and walk on the beach with your flippers on, so it was quite difficult to get out to sea and you felt like you were going against the current sometimes . When we made out to sea eventually, we saw more fish and sea lions, some of the gang said they saw turtles, but I missed it. Hopefully I'll get to see them another day. The current was a bit stronger this time and I got a bit panicky again, but I just carried on and overcame it. The water was also colder on this island too, so you wouldn't want to be in the water for too long. We snorkelled all along the coast line and back to the beach afterwards, for me, this was probably the longest I'd ever swam for, so I was quite pleased with myself. We had the underwater camera, so John tried to take some photos, although I doubt if they will come out to be honest. 

Once we were back to shore, the dinghy came back to pick everyone up, so we got back to the boat and had a shower ready for our briefing and for dinner to be served. It was quite nice at mealtimes, as everyone sat together on different tables and all talked to each other. Once dinner had finished, we started to play many card games with Erica, Mark, Ben and Michelle. They had loads of new games that we'd not even heard of so started telling us the rules and we started to play. It was fun and brought everyone together, so we carried on playing cards for the rest of the evening until everyone wanted to go to bed. Luckily the boat journeys are not too rough, so nobody is feeling sea sick yet.....