Galapagos Islands Adventure Yoga Retreat! Day 2!

This was our first official day waking up at Semilla Verde. I was up at a little before 5am to do my practice so I could lead the group through a morning session at 6am. We did a sun salutation practice, followed by a seated seedless meditation.

After a quick breakfast, we were on our way to the port to head to Bartolome Island.
Steve, a really nice, down to earth guide was to lead us on this journey. We lucked out with Steve as he turned out to be a walking encyclopedia.

It was a 2hr voyage on the Sea Finch to Bartolome Island. On the way we say a few Manta Rays in the water; big, black, square bodies that floated by us. They looked, at first glance, as if someone had thrown a giant blanket or carpet overboard. There were a few sea turtles too but they were hard to spot and there was a large black and white bird called a Frigate that landed on our boat and hitched a ride to the island with us.

About halfway on our journey, there was an incredible moment, when someone spotted a couple of dolphins, swimming alongside the boat. They got closer and we realized that it wasn't just one or two but a whole family, or a pod of them. They swam under us and alongside the boat and just in front and to the side of the bow. We leaned overboard and watched them and as they leapt ahead of the boat and breached the water they would turn sideways and look up at us. We were checking them out and they were checking us out. Christopher Greenfield captured a really nice video of the encounter. It was amazing!

Bartolome Island really highlighted the story of the Galapagos island's formation for me. I didn't know that the Galapagos is like Hawaii, in that it really is just made of lava, or magma, shooting up through the earth's crust and then cooling when it makes contact with the ocean floor. Incredible rock formations are the result. The islands look at times like you are walking on a different planet. Bartolome Island really has this barren rock quality. It felt like you could have been on the moon or even mars at times. There was a section of the island where we were encouraged to pick up some of the boulders lying around and they were as light as popcorn.
We hiked to the top of Bartolome. Some beautiful views up there!

Bartolome Island was pretty bare. There were some crabs on the beach and a few sea lions when we first came ashore. Not much wildlife on Bartolome, though.

After our hike we took the small dingy around the island to see if we could spot a Galapagos penguin, which is supposed to be pretty rare. We ended up seeing one and then later while snorkeling we saw another one too.

After we went searching for the penguin we returned to the boat for lunch and to get ready to go snorkeling.

The water was freezing! Some nice underwater life, though. We got to see a stingray and lots of different kinds of fish. When we returned to shore there were a couple of sea lions that had wandered up on the beach too and were hanging out with us.

After snorkeling, we returned to the Sea Finch and headed back to Santa Cruz Island and Semilla Verde. I fell asleep on deck with several others and ended up getting burnt on my forehead where the goggles had rubbed off my sunscreen while I was snorkeling. I had forgotten to reapply more!
We had another amazing dinner at Semilla Verde when we got home and then I led a Yoga nidra guided meditation before bed. There was a little bit of snoring in the meditation. Everybody was pretty exhausted from our long day.

I went to sleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. It was an incredible day and our adventure was only just beginning!