Floreana: Post Office Bay, Baroness Viewpoint, and Christmas Iguanas
- A Wandering Doc
- Jan 18
- 2 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Baroness Viewing Point is a fantastic place to absorb the environment of the Galapagos. Once inhabited by an indulgent baroness and her three lovers, the history of this island is intriguing. The legends about this baroness are associated with a fascinating murder mystery. There are easy trails in this area for exploring the flora and fauna of Floreana.
Three excursions and it’s only noon!! This trip is extreme! Started with Christmas iguana sightings from dingy ride to La Loberina, then a wet landing to hike to Barones viewpoint for a gorgeous view of the bay on Isla Floreana, then we went to a post office bay to mail postcards from a whiskey barrel (described below) and finished the morning with a relaxing swim time at a gorgeous white sand beach.
After leaving Baroness point we headed to the north side of Floreana, to find Post Office Bay. Its name gets in 1793, by the Captain James Colnett, who installed a wooden barrel that will serve sailors’ as a post office. Seamen will drop-off letters there, in other for another sailor, who would be headed back home, to take the letter with him and deliver it to the recipient. Nowadays, the tradition is still alive and tourist will leave behind letters and postcards, with the hope that other tourists will take them, for free, back to their country.
We found two letters in the whiskey barrel from Michigan people (Hudsonville and Ortonville) and we grabbed one postcard from Arkansas because we put three postcards in the whiskey barrel. If you put in three, you take out three. We will mail these when we get home. There are a couple schools of thought, one is that you find postcards from people close to home. Some postcards say "hand deliver only' and obviously you only take those if you live close. We didn't find any 'hand deliver only' close to us in Michigan so snail mail it will be. Will be curious if our post cards ever make it home.
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