Today we arrived at the last island of our expedition: Genovesa. This lonely rock is populated by more than a million nesting birds, and is known as “Bird’s Island” for this reason. Birds here don’t fear humans and therefore most of the time unphased by our presence. Early in the morning on this warm day, our first activity was kayaking. After breakfast we landed on Darwin’s Bay, where there is a beach made of broken pieces of white coral and where our trail was located. We did not have to search too far before finding birds, especially the highlight of today’s visit: the red-footed boobies. We also found frigate birds who were feeding their babies as they returned from stealing fish from other birds! After a hot morning, some of us needed to refresh and so we went snorkeling in these waters which were full of big animals like rays and turtles. We even had the chance to see some playful sea lions.
After lunch we collected the many pictures of the week that most guests were willing to share for our slideshow: an item that everybody will take later as a souvenir. After a well-deserved siesta, we visited Prince Phillip’s Steps. This location offers a very different terrain from the one in the morning. In this area we found a rocky trail covered by a forest of palo-santo trees and endless nests of sea birds, especially those of the Nazca boobies. We also found hundreds of storm petrels and we searched for the short-eared owl, the top of the food chain in this land. As the afternoon came to a close we cruised the bay by Zodiac observing the beautiful blue ocean. This was our last day in paradise…
