Española Island
Punta Suarez is the name of the gorgeous site we explored during the morning. It is a very beautiful and fantastic place, filled with lots of animals that were around us everywhere. Just as we disembarked, we saw the very famous and unique red and green marine iguanas, an endemic variety to this island.
The colorful Sally light foot crabs were there by the thousands to greet us at the landing site and as we walked along the shore. Three oystercatchers were also present and looked very busy feeding on sea urchins almost at the beginning of our walk.
This is the home of Galápagos waved albatross and their chicks, blue footed boobies, Nazca boobies, big lava lizards, lots of finches, Hood mocking birds, Galápagos doves and we even saw a baby Galápagos hawk.
This place was our highlight in the morning. We really did have a lot of fun walking amongst all these creatures that stimulated the imagination of early visitors of the archipelago.
The afternoon at Gardner Bay we had plenty of activities to choose from. We kayaked, had snorkeling lessons and also went for a ride on the glass-bottom boat so we saw a lot of colorful tropical fish and strange looking marine invertebrates such as sea stars, sea urchins and sea cucumbers.
The beach was filled with a lot of sea lions that happily shared their fantastic beach with us. Our younger explorers had a great time playing with young baby sea lions.
Española is really a big highlight of our Galápagos cruise and made a great impression on all of us.
