Page 63 - 2003 - Atlantic Islands

The little cove was quite beautiful also. Narrow inlet and small beach, but truly lovely

with its Caribbean water colors and glowing golden sands. The cove teemed with sea

life we learned later when Roger gave his Recap talk about all the creatures he had

seen while snorkeling there. Still, we were not sorry that we had elected to take the

beautiful hike since we would not have done any swimming anyway.

Stedson drove us through some fairly new lava beds to get us back to the pier in time

to jump back into the Zodiacs for the return to the Orion. The area we traversed he

called the “ghost rookeries” because we could still see the guano painting the black

lava projections on their leeward sides from the thousands of years when Brown-

footed and Red Footed Boobies, Noddies, and Wide-awake’s (gannets) nested here.

Because of the feral cats, the birds deserted the mainland at least 200 years ago.

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