January 27, 2026, Day 7 of the Cruise
We started today on Rabida Island. it was pure rust colour. I have to say it’s a good think I was not allowed to take sand from Galapagos, because I would have had to take at lest 6 vials. We have been on beaches and paths of red, white, black, brown, coral, coarse, fine, powdery, everything really. Rabida’s sand is volcanic but it’s volcanic with a really high iron content, so instead of black, it’s red. It’s amazing. I haven’t had my eyes react to so much red since we were in the desert in Jordan.
Unfortunately, Rich was still not feeling well, so he missed the morning hike on Rabida and the beach snorkeling. We started out on beach and went for a hike upwards and got a great view. There were so many lizards and birds on the beach and on the hike and a Sea Lion that literally walked out of the water towards us, right up the beach and hit the path. They are so graceful in the water (my best Sea Lion video every is further down), but so awkward on land. They look like someone tied there legs together and they are only able to take steps by moving their feet at the ankles. Anyway, SO MANY VIDEOS below.
I’m sad that he missed this snorkeling because I’ve never see anything like it. It was fish highway. I’ve never seen so many fish. There had to be millions of them. The “highway” was probably 50 metres wide and went on for well over a kilometre from what I could see, maybe longer. And as far as depth goes, at least a few metres. The only way to see the depth of it was when one of the people in our group dove down and the fish parted in a graceful circle and then closed back up.
The most amazing thing happened and I thought I captured video of it, but I was so flustered that I didn’t actually record it. One of our group, dove down to the fish highway. As he got close to them, disrupting their flow, they opened up in a circle. The man was only about two feet above them swimming towards them when the open circle formed, and swimming up through the circle came a full grown white tipped shark. They were face to face for a second. The guy in our group did some crazy acrobatics to get out of there. It fully scared the shit out of him. I was on the surface so not nearly as close as he was and it scared the shit out of me! I did manage to get a glimpse of a shark a little while later. Just for a few seconds The video is below.
Then I got the best underwater video of a Sea Lion on the whole trip. Here is the video and some stills from it.
After lunch we went snorkeling again off the beach at Bartalome Island.