North Seymour and Santiago - Celebrity Xpedition Land/Cruise Tour - November 16, 2023

This was the day we were supposed to go to Genovesa Island.  Genovesa Island is known for its birds so was a stop I was really looking forward to.  Unfortunately, a few months ago, they discovered cases of the avian flu.  The Galapagos National Park is so focused on conservation (which is so wonderful) and so was very quick to act to try and close sites where the virus was present to try and prevent spread to other islands.  They have been monitoring cases very closely since and I understand are seeing a downturn in the number of cases so hopefully can re-open soon the fours sites currently closed.

All that said, today's morning port would prove itself a very worthy substitution.   This morning was probably the highlight of the trip (or one of the very top highlights).

We started the day with breakfast delivered to our suite.

Our naturalist the day before strongly encouraged us to opt for the long walk, if at all possible, and so that is what we did.  Our landing on North Seymour Island was a dry landing.  This island is a breeding site for Great and Magnificent Frigatebirds (I never realized there were two different species of Frigatebirds) and Blue-footed Boobies.  This walk would allow us to get up close to nests of all three species.

Some dry landings were steps cut into the lava rock

They often laid down a towel on wet lava rock to add a little grip

Juvenile Great Frigatebird (their heads are tan/yellow colored)

Male Frigatebird (it's hard to tell male Greats from Magnificents)

Juvenile Great Frigatebird

Nazca Booby

Female Magnificent Frigatebird
(the black on their head extends down on their white chest to create a black tie look)

Male Frigatebird trying to attract a mate

Male Frigatebird

Juvenile Great Frigatebird

Baby Magnificent Frigatebird (all white head)

Juvenile Great Frigatebird

Juvenile Great Frigatebird

Blue-footed Booby Couple doing the mating dance

Land Iguana

Blue-footed Booby with a baby

Juvenile Great Frigatebird

Blue-footed Booby sitting on eggs

Juvenile Magnificent Frigatebird (pure white head)

Juvenile Blue-footed Booby (he still has to grow into his blue feet)

Juvenile Blue-footed Booby

Female Magnificent Frigatebird
(the black of her head doesn't extend down to her chest so it looks like she is wearing a white tie)

Male and baby Magnificent Frigatebird

Female and Baby Magnificent Frigatebird

Magnificent Frigatebirds

Baby and parent Blue-footed Booby

Baby Blue-footed Booby

Blue-footed Booby with twin babies
(a rare occurrence - they usually lay two eggs but usually only one survives)

Female and baby Magnificent Frigatebird

Galapagos Sea Lions

Galapagos Sea Lion with about a 2 week old baby

Sally Lightfoot Crab

The photos that follow were an amazing experience to watch.  The baby sea lion had wandered from his mom (who was still close and watching) and seemed to panic when he couldn't find his mom.  At one point, he tried to turn towards one in our group who had to step back.  Mom eventually moved forward and the two were reunited.  

It wasn't uncommon to find a sea lion in our path.  We always had to watch where we walked.

After the long walk on North Seymour Island, we returned to the ship and I changed for one last deep water snorkel.  The water was clear for this snorkel and I saw so many colorful fish.  Check out my snorkel video in another post for video footage from that snorkel.

Back on board, we enjoyed lunch at Darwin's Restaurant and then enjoyed a few views from our balcony.

There was a bit of wind.

That afternoon, we had signed up for a tour of the bridge which was a bit more informal than you experience on the big ships.  Someone from guest relations just showed us into the bridge where the officer on duty did his best to give us an explanation and answer questions.

Paper maps, just in case the electronic ones fail

All the various flags they use

The coffee station for the bridge crew

This is the Starlink hardware.  I had not expected internet to be so incredibly amazing on this cruise.  I did speed tests on three different occasions during the cruise.  Download speeds were between 118 Mbps and 198 Mbps.  Upload speeds were between 9.07 Mbps and 20.8 Mbps.

This might be a good spot to add the tour of the ship I recorded.  

Later that afternoon we stopped at Sullivan Bay on Santiago Island.  We had the choice of a walk on the lava rock field that probably wouldn't have a lot of wildlife or an extended wildlife zodiac ride.  We took the zodiac ride option although didn't really see a lot of wildlife.

Lava Heron

Lava Heron

That evening, after our nightly briefing, the staff had set up a second dinner under the stars for us and one other couple in higher suites.  It was a beautiful evening and at one point, I heard a splash in the water so we all went over to the side.  I don't know what made the splash but we could see a shark swimming right under the surface.  It was pretty cool.