Bartolomé & Santiago Islands
This was our last full day in this wonderful Paradise; nevertheless we found so many new things in these two Islands.
At six o’clock in the morning most of us landed on Bartolomé Island to do a hike, where the objective was to get to the top of the island located 345 feet above sea level. We climbed over 370 steps to do it. Probably one of the highlights of our visit was the geology. The landscape was very arid. It had lots of parasitic cones and young lava flows; there were different colors and textures in the rocks which gave us the sensation of walking on a different planet.
Later in the morning after our well-deserved breakfast we landed again on Bartolomé Island, this time to visit a beautiful golden sandy beach. At this site some of our guests walked to the other side of the island across the sand dunes, many shore birds were seen here. After all the walking and a sunny morning, the water looked so inviting that almost everyone went swimming and deep water snorkeling. Big schools of fish and white tipped reef sharks were found!
After the morning’s activities, we headed up to the western corner of Santiago Island, to land at a place called Puerto Egas. It was drizzling a little so we geared up with our rain jackets and went for a walk along the coast very close to small tidal pools; this was the perfect place to find shore birds. Shortly afterwards the drizzle stopped and we continued enjoying the island where we came across a lot of marine iguanas nesting as well as a couple of Galápagos fur sea lions and some lava lizards.
Some guests who did not want to go on the walk stayed at a black sandy volcanic beach where they could do some snorkeling. They all came back very happy because they counted seven white tipped reef sharks just starting their foraging; a green back sea turtle was also found at this site!
There is not any doubt that the enchanted Islands are a magical place with so much diversity of species to show to all the visitors that come to see them.
