This morning before breakfast we headed for a Zodiac exploration along the coast of Chinese Hat and Santiago Island. This outing gave us the opportunity to look for Galapagos sea lions, marine iguanas and several species of birds. We got to see striated herons, yellow crowned night herons, and Great blue herons which were all hunting, and in the case of striated heron, we saw it catch a small fish. As the waters between Chinese Hat and Santiago Island were very calm, we also had the opportunity to go kayaking inside the channel and then back to the ship.
After breakfast we went snorkeling along the coast of Santiago and there were several species of fish and marine invertebrates such as black coral, orange cup coral, chocolate chip sea stars, blue sea stars, anemones and sea urchins. Some of our guests also spotted a lonely white-tipped reef shark swimming along the coast.
After this activity we got on board and navigated towards Sullivan Bay on the east coast of Santiago Island. There we explored a young lava flow from an 1897 eruption and observed the many different shapes in the lava. Some thoughy the shapes looked like sea lions, others like hearts, definitely most shapes were like ropes all twisted and in other areas it appeared as folded fabric. The landscape is barren but from time to time we found the occasional Mollugo plant as well as the lava cactus that are the pioneers of lava flows.
We returned aboard at the end of the afternoon after a fantastic day!
