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| All friends until mating season! |
Saw 5 baby seals playing in a little pool near the rocks, gas little men, they're exactly like puppies. Their favourite game is catching the tails of the iguanas as they try to scurry past on their way to fishing in the sea. Sea lions only do it for banter, but the iguanas get rightly rattled by it, especially if they get killed by having their heads split open on the rocks. Come on iguanas, don't get so sour lads, it's only a bit of craic!
The National Geographic boat was in the area too. This is a big luxury boat usually stuffed with v rich Americans and this was no exception! Only thing for us is that once on an island, if a group is coming up behind you, you have to keep moving. And with 120 aboard that craft, at least one of their groups was right up behind us all the time. So we'd have less time to enjoy each part of our tour. Ah well!
So we moved on anyway, and as we were in the largest boobie colony in the Galapagos, they were everywhere. The close relation of the blue-footed is the Nazca Boobie but the two never interbreed.
The Nazca Boobies' mating ritual is absolute gold. Basically a lad chooses a lady he's trying to impress. Then, for no less than 3 hours, he has to fetch stones and sticks for her - to help her build an expert nest! Sticks hold the most currency, she likes them, but also if he has to make a big effort and go a long distance to fetch the stones, this goes down very well. It was hilarious. Each time he fetches something, she judges him, and eventually her resistance is broken and she lays down and accepts his sexual advances. For all of 2 seconds. Yes, he puts in 3 HOURS of work for 2 SECONDS of pleasure. Hardly worth it there chief! The lad in this video is still working on her.
Then, after this video, he started playing hard to get by walking away and staying away for a while and she started calling out to him at last! Women!
Oh and after she gets pregnant, she fires all his stones and sticks away and makes her own nest anyway! Women!
We kept walking around anyway, and came across a class little blowhole.
Tourists used be able to go a lot closer than we can now, but a guide 15 yrs ago thought this was a great place to stand when the water was bursting up 40 metres into the air! He basically stood straddling the blowhole and encouraged 4 of his passengers to do the same. The 5 of them were obviously swept into the sea, one French-Canadian lady was then smacked against the rocks and killed. So we've to stay well away from it now.
Just around here as well were two class things. The first were these cliffs - which reminded me of the Cliffs of Moher in Clare! Mad. This photo's at a poor angle ie hard to see the comparison, but it's the best I could find on the net as I don't have any photos of it myself!
The second thing was a bunch of albatrosses. I've always wanted to see one as they have the largest wingspan of any bird. And because Monty Python do a brilliant sketch about them. Only a short one, but it's gold. John Cleese plays an usher at a cinema who's selling not beer, not snacks, but an albatross. Ridiculous and surreal, so it's classic Python. I really enjoyed seeing the birds up close. Alfonso was telling us that it can take them up to 4 hours to land sometimes because they keep gliding in the wind over their landing area! And they have a runway to land on at the top of the cliff we were at! Then when taking off, they run to the edge of the cliff and drop off like bungee jumpers, then spread the wings and away they go! Brilliant to watch!
I made a video taking off the Python sketch but again, it's on the other memory card, so here's the original Python sketch instead:
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