What a change! Air and water temperatures had dropped almost five degrees in one week. Early this morning we experienced fog around Roca Redonda all the way down to Fernandina Island. The freshness of the lower temperature was a relief, to be sure.

During our walk on Punta Espinosa, the northeastern corner of Fernandina Island, we saw a myriad of things, animate and inanimate, from "pahoehoe" lava to nursing sea lions, from shore petunias to Sally Lightfoot crabs. On taking a path between some mangrove trees, we found a very large, very fat, very sacked-out marine iguana in the middle of the trail. Talking to him from a distance didn't make a difference, or if he woke up, he didn't react, so we carefully made our way around one side of him (always taking the same side in order not to give him the impression we were surrounding him).

After so many years in the islands, it still amazes me that a wild creature can so thoroughly ignore our presence here, when in most places on earth we cause terror and fear with our very appearance. Their innocence, and therefore their vulnerability, still cuts to my heart.