Tales from the Galapagos: San Cristobal Island and Boobies!

This 3-hour trek was by far the most difficult with rocky terrain, an uphill climb and hot weather. But the payoff was our chance to see blue-footed boobies, red-footed boobies and Naska boobies in their natural habitat.

This gives you an idea of the hike up - yes, straight up that hill in front of us!

And our reward was this lovely lady who had made a nest for herself at the top. This is a blue-footed booby and the white powdery looking stuff surrounding her nest is bird poop. Blue-footed boobies make their nests on land in the dirt. Both male and female sit on the egg and take care of the chicks.

These two are photos of the red-footed boobies - the top is an albino red-footed booby. Both are sitting on nests - red-footed boobies nest in the trees and have special prehensile webbed feet that allow them to hold on to the branches.

You can see from this photo that there isn't really much of a nest for the blue-footed boobies. And just look at those feet!

This pair were hanging out in the middle of our path (we had to walk around) and seemed to be having a friendly chat.

 And those feet!!

 Here's a shot of the pretty views. Rugged volcanic terrain that sets off the blue of the water nicely.

There were babies everywhere! And they're pretty ugly when they're little.

The main attraction here were the blue-footed boobies. We saw them again occasionally, but never in the same numbers as we saw this morning on San Cristobal island. The red-footed and Naska boobies will make another appearance later in the trip.