Today we woke up at Gardner Bay in Española Island. After a delicious breakfast, some guests disembarked for deep water snorkeling along the shore of Gardner Islet, while other guests went to visit Gardner Beach. Sea lions welcomed us at the beach and guests had a great time taking photos of these animals peacefully basking in the sand. In the afternoon, we disembarked to explore Punta Suarez. Here, we could find one of the most beautiful sea birds in Galapagos, the waved albatross. It’s the end of the mating season for these birds, and we observed a few couples in their final days on Española before they fly down to the coast of Peru to find food. We also found one of the largest nesting grounds of Nazca boobies, where we observed males bringing tiny rocks to females to catch their attention for mating. We ended our day with our traditional recap of the day onboard the National Geographic Endeavour II.
7/3/2022
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National Geographic Endeavour II
North Seymour and Rábida
For this first full day, we started with a walk over North Seymour Island, located on the north side of Baltra Island (officially known as South Seymour). This uplifted island is also known as Bird Island. It is home to a nice community of marine birds, such as blue-footed boobies, two species of frigatebirds, and swallow-tailed gulls (the only nocturnal gull). For our afternoon activities, we snorkeled by a red colored beach on Rábida island. We concluded the day with a stroll over an iron-oxide beach. Along the trail, we explored a saltwater lagoon with sixteen American flamingos. We even saw some nests!
