Bartolomé & Santiago Islands
The day started early in the morning with a walk to the summit of Bartolomé Island, one of the highlights of the cruise around the archipelago. This is a young formation of lava that is distinct from the rest of the group, considered today as a geologist’s paradise. Bartolomé has many different geological features at a very close range, so having the opportunity to observe and talk about them makes this visit one of the most interesting visits in the Galápagos. Believed to be around 250,000 years old, Bartolomé has a collection of lava tubes in a variety of sizes that are just impossible to imagine. The closeness of the spatter cones let us talk about how calderas of volcanoes form…
Once at the top we were thrilled to observe one of the most impressive and famous landscapes of the enchanted islands, Pinnacle Rock and the golden beach where we had our snorkel in the morning. This is, due its beauty, as close to a painting as you can think of.
In terms of wildlife, Bartolomé is also interesting… just a few very resistant plants and lava lizards have been able to make their home here, due to particularly extreme conditions. These pioneer plants and animals have adapted to live almost without water… if it weren’t for the rain, they would not be able to make it here. Thanks to the conditions today and the very strong rains we have being having lately we could see that they were happily jumping around the rocks and catching flies…
We visited Puerto Egas in the afternoon, located on the northwestern coast of Santiago Island. The black beach and the volcanic tuff formations covered in green vegetation were again very close to those paintings we used to have before photographic times. The contrast of colors between the formations and the black lava flows made a perfect setting for our final walk on the Galápagos Islands. Sea lions nursing, marine iguanas feeding on the rock, and herons hunting, not disturbed even by our presence here, made us realize that isolation is the best thing that can happen to these fragile and pristine ecosystems.
