Barrels and caves

7 July 2006

Day 3 on the boat and we arrived at Post Office Bay on Floreana. The post office barrel here was used in ye olden days as a means of sending post around the world. Passing ships would leave their post and the sailors would have a rummage through the barrel, taking anything they could deliver themselves. Nowadays tourists continue the tradition, leaving their postcards and taking any that they can deliver once home again.

As you’ll see in the photos, people have also left more long-lasting evidence of their visits, in the form of decorated driftwood, signs and messages. Unfortunately, the one web address I found among all this no longer works – and using archive.org doesn’t reveal an email address either. It’s a shame really, because they visited on my birthday in 2003 and it would have been nice to say hi.

Post Office Bay was our first wet landing. Well, that’s not true. I’m special, so José carried me ashore while everyone else flopped out of the boat and got their feet wet. As the others were disembarking, a few penguins were swimming about in the water nearby.

We walked across a rocky, scrubby landscape until we reached a hole in the ground, which led to an underground lava tube. There were steep, rickety steps to descend and we were soon out of daylight and needing to use our torches. The trouble is, holding a torch requires a hand. A hand which would much rather have been concentrating on helping out its buddy as I scrambled about, practically on all fours, trying not to get stuck for all eternity in a hole in the southern hemisphere. Having defeated one part early on, where I thought I wouldn’t be able to go any further, I realised that I wasn’t going to emerge from this dark, slippy-slidey, rocky, gritty cave as anything other than sweaty and filthy, so I may as well just clamber in whatever inelegant way was necessary.

Our nimble-footed native, Enriqué was ahead of us and sat on a rock to wait for us to catch up. It was a brilliantly placed rock, as he was just within reach to give me a pull up a very scrambly slope.

The cave ended for us in sea water, just about discernible in our torchlight. We stood under the high ceiling of this lava cave and by the dim glow of our torches, Enriqué told us the story of the Baroness who came to Floreana with her three lovers. I’m not sure I followed it exactly, but it’s a story of intrigue, mysterious murders, disappearance and vegetarians being poisoned after they supposedly ate chicken.

After scrambling back out of the cave and determining in daylight that, yes, I was filthy and sweaty, we walked to the beach. Suzy had a bit of a swimming/snorkelling session, while I paddled about with sea lions not far away and little fishes at my toes. We stayed at this beach for a while before it was time to go back to the boat for lunch.

After lunch Suzy and some others went snorkelling at Devil’s Crown, a collection of particularly spiky-looking rocks. Later that afternoon we disembarked once more, this time at Punta Cormorant. It was another wet landing (but not for me!), so please enjoy Suzy’s expression as she realises she’s now got to put her sandals on her wet, sandy feet. Photo taken by the one with dry, unsandy feet. From the beach and its welcoming committee of lazy sea lions, we walked up a steep track through scrubby trees and plants until we suddenly came across a bay where flamingos were feeding. Enriqué was surprised at how many there were for us to see, so luck was evidently on our side there.

We kept walking, stopping at various points to admire and photograph the brilliant pink birds, until we reached a white sand beach on the other side of the island. Suddenly Enriqué spotted a baby turtle in the water and shouted. He started running down to the waves and we all followed, leaving tracks in the sand. “Oh,” said Enriqué on reaching the baby turtle, “It’s seaweed.”

Strolling about on the pretty beach, we read messages in the sand, saw turtle nests and ghost crab holes and photographed our long-legged shadows as the sun began to set. There was always time on this holiday, time to enjoy one’s surroundings, to have a rest and to store up some memories.

Back on the boat, we discovered that our bathroom light had blown. However, having been snorkelling twice that day, la Sooze was desperate for a shower. So we unscrewed the lenses of our two mini Maglites and propped them up in toilet rolls on a shelf so that she could shower by “candlelight”.

After dinner José told us that he’d seen our ridiculous ingenious setup and had replaced our bulb. The boat soon set sail for Hood Island, so back in our cabin bathroom I showered in good light, but in danger of concussion.