Sunday morning we arrived in Española and hiked Punta Suarez. As we stepped off the panga, we were greeted with BABY SEA LIONS! Literally, the cutest things I have ever seen in my entire life. They were playing and rolling in the sand, and just so cute. One baby, off to the side, waddled directly toward me and almost right into my arms! I could have sat there all day playing with it. We continued our walk to find a mama sea lion that had just given birth to her baby sea lion, the placenta was next to her and all. As we were watching, frigate birds swooped down to eat the placenta (since it’s a good source of protein) and we really felt for the mama sea lion as she tried to fend off the frigate birds. Believe it or not, we saw three separate mama sea lions that had just given birth that morning. In fact, we watched one of them bathe her baby for the first time and kiss afterwards.
It actually made all of us AW out loud; the sea lions are really affectionate, as even the babies were playing and kissing each other. Farther along the path, we ran into a pack of blue-footed boobies along the cliffside. I went a bit picture crazy – too cool. We watched the boobie mating dance and farther along the path, watched the albatross mating dance. Really neat. And, baby albatross’ are super cute and fuzzy too.
