Tortuga Bay... boobies galore!!!
So in this our first full day in the Galapagos, the motley crew voted for a beach day. The locals were kind enough to point us towards a place called Tortuga Bay, a mile-long beach, off to it's own, just to the west of the town.
When we got to the beach, we were the only people there. The sand was the softest my feet have ever touched. We were told that the place has a brutal riptide and that if we wanted to go snorkeling that we should walk to the far end of the beach where there was a protected lagoon. As we were walking down the beach there were just a few sets of footprints and some rather strange tracks that we later figured out belonged to the marine iguanas and sea turtles.
The lagoon was gorgeous. On the far side it was nothing but mangroves, on the side that we approached from it solid volcanic rock and cactus trees, in the middle it was a perfect sandy beach. We spent the next few hours exploring, snorkeling and lounging... life was good. We saw probably a hundred marine iguanas, a few sharks, some fish, a really big sting ray and lots of blue-footed boobies.
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