Bartolome & Santiago Islands
With a glorious and spectacular sunrise at Bartolomé Island, we started our first full day in the Galápagos. More than half of our troopers took the early morning walk option to climb up the summit of this very eroded tuff crater and enjoy the best view point of the whole archipelago.
After we were all geared up for snorkeling we had our second morning outing. This time to enjoy a wonderful water site. Snorkeling around Pinnacle rock in Bartolome Island is one of the many magnificent sites we have around. Everybody had a wonderful experience: sea stars, swimming with the Galápagos Penguins, reef sharks and schools of many different and colorful tropical fish.
Right at the afternoon, no one ever imagined the surprise that Neptune had for us. As we were all finishing our dessert a big humpback whale was spotted breaching out of the water. We enjoyed its active company for more than an hour! As it went into the shallows and the Islander could not follow it any further, we started with a presentation about the Park Service and Neptune surprised us again! This time with a big group of dolphins, maybe around a hundred of them. They were jumping and swimming around our ship. Two species commonly seen around the Galápagos waters traveled together: the common dolphins and the bottle nosed dolphins.
After all this fantastic and unexpected excitement, we had a great afternoon walk on the shore line of Puerto Egas on Santiago Island with outstanding wild highlights such as Galápagos Hawks, big groups of large marine iguanas, Galápagos and fur sea lions, big, bright orange Sally Lightfoot crabs, finches, mockingbirds and lots of shore birds among others.
Of course the view of the eastern slopes of the beautiful shield volcanoes of Isabella Island added amusement to the dramatic and rugged volcanic shore line. We left the island with a romantic sunset and Venus above our heads. Really a fabulous day!
With a glorious and spectacular sunrise at Bartolomé Island, we started our first full day in the Galápagos. More than half of our troopers took the early morning walk option to climb up the summit of this very eroded tuff crater and enjoy the best view point of the whole archipelago.
After we were all geared up for snorkeling we had our second morning outing. This time to enjoy a wonderful water site. Snorkeling around Pinnacle rock in Bartolome Island is one of the many magnificent sites we have around. Everybody had a wonderful experience: sea stars, swimming with the Galápagos Penguins, reef sharks and schools of many different and colorful tropical fish.
Right at the afternoon, no one ever imagined the surprise that Neptune had for us. As we were all finishing our dessert a big humpback whale was spotted breaching out of the water. We enjoyed its active company for more than an hour! As it went into the shallows and the Islander could not follow it any further, we started with a presentation about the Park Service and Neptune surprised us again! This time with a big group of dolphins, maybe around a hundred of them. They were jumping and swimming around our ship. Two species commonly seen around the Galápagos waters traveled together: the common dolphins and the bottle nosed dolphins.
After all this fantastic and unexpected excitement, we had a great afternoon walk on the shore line of Puerto Egas on Santiago Island with outstanding wild highlights such as Galápagos Hawks, big groups of large marine iguanas, Galápagos and fur sea lions, big, bright orange Sally Lightfoot crabs, finches, mockingbirds and lots of shore birds among others.
Of course the view of the eastern slopes of the beautiful shield volcanoes of Isabella Island added amusement to the dramatic and rugged volcanic shore line. We left the island with a romantic sunset and Venus above our heads. Really a fabulous day!
