Travel trivia: what does the Hawaiian word "pahoehoe" refer to? Sometimes lava creates kind of a "ropy" landscape. That's what the Hawaiians call pahoehoe.

Wake-up call at 6am to watch mammals as we make our way across the northern tip of Isabela. We happen to run into (well, almost run into) a pod of common dolphins. There were a ton of them! They kept their distance, unlike bottlenose dolphins that will run in front of the ship's bow. It was a great sight for at least 30min.

Over night we crossed the equator coming up north on the east side of Isabela, and around 8:30 we crossed it again coming over the top on the west side. The environment here is very different from the rest of the archipelago. The deep and cold Cromwell current is rising up on the western side of Isabela, making the water a balmy 67F to snorkel in. First order of the day (after the morning mammal spotting and breakfast) was a zodiac ride along the coast of Ecuador Volcano. And what a ride it was! You see, the cold water is at the heart of the very rich marine ecosystem. So when I went diving earlier I saw an ocean sunfish, which I now realize is rare. But when we dropped into the zodiac, we saw a school of 6, which the biologist had never seen before! A little later we were greeted by penguins and sea turtles, and the little fur seals that we set out to see almost went unnoticed because of the abundance of aquatic life we saw on that ride. We even got to see marine iguanas in action: jumping in the water, swimming down to eat the algae, coming back up to catch a wave that drops them on land, and then hold on for dear life and climb out of the surf. These little guys are pretty good swimmers!

So having done the zodiac ride, we quickly changed into snorkeling gear and went back to snorkel. At first a little boring. Just a really deep wall, and I kept hoping I wouldn't drop Steve's camera, because there would have been no way for me to free-dive down to get it. As we made our way around the little bay, things started to get really interesting. Being known for it's large population of sea turtles, we ended up coming across a sea of sea turtles! They were swimming close to us (one came right at Liz) and some were lining up for a cleaning station (this is where other fish pick the parasites off the turtle's shield and skin). And as we're observing that, a flock of penguins swims by (really fast). I was lucky to have the camera going so that I could capture a few shots - there were 10 of 'm, and they weren't hanging around for mulligans.

As rich as the morning was, the afternoon was very interesting, too. We sailed to and set foot on Fernandina. This is the newest island in the archipelago, and it is packed with marine iguanas. We saw them blowing water out of their noses, bathing in the sun, seeking shade, but most of all just hanging out and not moving too much. Having seen so many seals, the little baby seals were hardly an attraction. Fernandina is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, but we came away clean, so no issues there. We got up close to a nest of flightless cormorants (up close is 2ft away), which was something even the biologist had never really seen in her life before. The pictures of the iguanas are like a scene from Jurassic Park.

We also studied a whale skeleton in the middle of the island. Colliding of the plates caused this part of the island to be pushed up several feet in just a few days time, putting the skeleton once on the seafront now in the middle of the island. I must say, we would have walked across this island in 20min. With the naturalists, it was a fascinating 2hr walk. Love traveling this way!

The evening held cocktails at the top deck, followed by a quick photo lecture on composition techniques. I spent 30min with the national geographic photographer talking about light and how to properly light pictures in the afternoon. I learned a lot about making tradeoffs. Pick the subject, optimize it with over/under exposure so the colors look the most like the real thing, then accept that the background is misrepresented. If you can't accept that, compromise the subject for the background. It's all about decisions. Needless to say, these large evening sessions need to cover iPhone cameras and $5,000 cameras, so the topic is pretty generic. His session about using diagonals in your pictures was great, and the images he took of marine iguanas with his iPhone 4 were far superior to the 128 images I shot using my advanced DSLR camera. It clearly is not just about the equipment…