At night we navigate from Espanola to Floreana Island. Floreana,
also known as Charles or Santa Maria, is one of the four
inhabited islands, and the first one to be officially inhabited
by Ecuadorians, when Ecuador took possession of the islands in
1832. Back in those days, the islands were not a National Park,
thus, hundreds of animals and plants were introduced to help the
first inhabitants survive in such a hard and isolated
environment. Nowadays, Floreana holds a small population of
about 130 people entirely dedicated to agriculture, fishing and
tourism activities. This small Island has many visitor sites,
and today before breakfast, we landed at Punta Cormorant. This
site is well known by its green beach, due to the presence of
small crystals of olivine that have been eroded from lava rocks.
The mineral olivine (or peridot, when of gem-quality) is a
common mineral found in the Earth's subsurface. At Punta
Cormorant, we were greeted by a group of four playful young sea
lions and once we had enough picture