Homeless Sea Lions, Boobies, and Iguanas

 After  Genovese and Bartolomo, we headed to  Santa Cruz which is inhabited and where lions, sea, lounge about in large numbers 

  It does not seem like that bad of a life.  The alpha male sea lion is huge as compared to the rest - over 500 lbs in many cases- and generally maintains a a harem of about 15-18 females and a large numbers of pesky and ill behaved kids, all of whom he has to guard as the price of the sea lion patriarchy.  Seeing him up close in the water is a  little scary.  He will attack if he thinks his flock in threatened.  I turned around while snorkeling and found one 4' away.  I prefer the pups.  

But sadly there appears to be a growing homeless population amongst the sea lions as we found in Porto Aroyo.  Not sure whether it is because of drugs, lack of education or a general lassitude, but I observed the following hopeless types-

Swimming with sea lions all around you- below, right and left- all within a few feet is a great experience.  The kid sea lions are very playful and curious and will swim right up to you.  

San Cristobal and Espanol Island (Spanish Island for those not as fluent in Spanish as I) offer large numbers of boobies, of the bird as distinct from the foolish human variety (the latter far more numerous in my experience).  There are red-

And blue-

And then what they call NASCAR boobies who do not have any foot distinction.

  As the result of this, they have evidently latched onto NASCAR as their sport of choice and claim to fame and you will see some sporting streaming advertisements for GOODYEAR or MICHELIN or CHEERIOS, etc.  They have to do something to stand out, I suppose.  

There are also pelicans and short haired owls (I guess they go to the barber regularly or aspire to join the Marine Corps) who hunt during the day-

And sundry other birds whose name escapes me as they are not boobies (some sort of bird who hunts at night and thus was snoozing when we walked by)-

And of course iguanas, both the smaller and black marine iguana-

And the larger and more colorful land iguana who were often seen fighting with one another-

And a little scenery thrown in when we shot through the keyhole in our dingy (Kicker Rock in the distance)-