Floreana / post office bay

Tuesday, July 27th
We arrived at Floreana island in the wee morning. Our first stop on the island was to Post office bay. The "post office" was originally set up back in the day when pirates and sailors used to sail the ocean blue. The so called "Post office" was literally a bird house looking box with a door where you would leave mail to be delivered to various parts of the world. Sailors back in the day would leave mail behind hoping that someone would eventually come to the island and be heading toward the direction of where the letter was going and hand deliver it to the person who it is addressed to. So, here on Galapagos they try to keep to tradition alive and ask tourists to drop off some postcards and take some that are left behind and hand deliver it to the person it is addressed to. I grabbed 2 different cards for folks in Brooklyn and I left behind 4 (one for mimi, one for my friend Cesar, one for my friend Katti, and one for my friend Jill...I hope they all get to you!) 
After sending off my mail, we hiked to some lava tubes on the island. We then climbed down inside of them and hiked around them in the pitch black darkness. These tubes in the ground were formed from layers upon layers of lava flowing through the earth and creating holes large enough for you to climb around inside of them. They were huge. It was pretty cool!  
After the tubing around, we hiked to the top of a viewpoint called Empress point. This island was extremely dry with some pockets of greenery; but nonetheless, it was gorgeous. 
Next we got back on the boat and changed into our swim suits and took the dingy to a giant rock, Devil's crown, to go snorkeling. There we saw loads of the same fish as before as well as two white tip reef sharks. After a successful snorkel we went for another hike around the island to Punta cormorant. There we saw a reddish-colored salty lagoon where supposedly flamingoes roam but sadly we saw no flamingoes. The lagoon kinda reminded me of the salt flats in Bolivia. We hike to the opposite side of the island and came across an absolutely beautiful isolated beach. There we just relaxed on the sand and watched the animals around us. Kicking it on the beach with us were sea lions, stingrays, marine iguanas, and these vividly-colored yellow warblers. After some time on the beach, we headed back on the boat and ate some grub. Again, we would set sail for our next destination - Plaza Sur.