Bartolomé: Snorkeling & Beach Time

Wednesday, July 11 (Part V)

After our hike to the top of Bartolomé (post here), we climbed into the zodiacs for the beach activities portion of the afternoon landing.  The ride was short; just over to the north beach, adjacent to Pinnacle Rock.  It was to be a wet landing, so we removed our trail hikers and socks, rolled up our pants legs, and jumped barefoot into the ankle-deep water.

The snorkeling bags had been transported from the ship while we were hiking and were already on the beach when we arrived.  Mui lost no time in gearing up and getting in the water.  When he finally came out an hour later, he didn’t even use words to describe the snorkel; just gave it “two thumbs up.”

My beach time was very quiet.  Except for a lone great blue heron, there wasn’t much in the way of wildlife.  The poor heron was being stalked by point & shooters.  Here's my short rant on this topic ... again.  There’s nothing wrong with using a P&S camera, but if that’s the choice, then one must accept the limitations that come with it and not bother the wildlife in the quest for close up pictures.

Finally, the heron got fed up and moved to the far end of the beach.  I followed at a distance, and sat down to enjoy its company when I caught up with him.  It was intent on fishing, but didn’t have much luck catching dinner.

It would be a shame if our actions change the behavior of the wildlife, causing
them to fear visitors.  that would ruin the experience for everyone.

Great blue herons could teach us a thing or two about patience.

My patience is rewarded when this heron moves a bit so I can capture
a  photo of it with Pinnacle Rock in the background.

Not finding what it was looking for, the heron moves back on the rocks.

As I was photographing the heron, my attention was caught by a pattern on the sand.  It looked like someone had rolled up tiny sand balls and created art on the beach.  When I saw a ghost crab burrow nearby, I figured it was something to do with them.  For all the patterns on the beach, I was surprised that not a single crab was in sight, not even ones scurrying to the safety of their burrows.

Ghost crab sand balls and burrow.
our naturalist later explained that ghost grabs eat the sand and spit it out as balls.

Eventually, I walked back to the landing site.  The zodiacs were already ferrying passengers back to the ship, but I opted to wait for Mui to come out of the water when timeout was called.  As always, we were amongst the last to return to the Xpedition.

Some snorkelers don’t venture out far; others go out as far as the naturalists
standing by in the zodiacs will allow them to go.

There was a wine and cheese tasting party on deck 4 aft, but we skipped that and used the time to get cleaned up from our hot afternoon landing.  Later, after the briefing on tomorrow’s activities, we joined the Passmans for dinner.

Our selections from the Day 4 Menu.

Fun though dinner was, we didn’t dally at the table.  Knowing that the ship was once again in waters where the crew is allowed to turn on the outside lights, we wanted to go out on deck and see what wildlife might be attracted to come close by.  We weren’t disappointed.  There was a feeding frenzy going on.  Blue-footed boobies and pelicans were flying and diving; their prey was the flying fish that occasionally hit the side of the ship and stun themselves; easy pickins for the birds.  There were also sharks and sea lions swimming about, although we didn’t see them feeding on anything.

Mui attempted to shoot some video.  Because it was so dark, it didn’t turn out great, but I’ll share a snippet anyway.

Check out the pelicans and the sharks.

We brought the night to a close with some stargazing on the bow of deck 6.  Our reward for staying up late was seeing a falling star.  Yes, I made a wish; no, I’m not going to share it.