Bartolomé & Santiago Island
Today we got up early in the morning to discover one of the most famous landscapes of the Galápagos Islands, Pinnacle Rock and the beautiful beaches that cover the north and south parts of the island. This scenario is the classical picture of the islands that is part of almost all of the brochures that advertise the place. The basaltic lava formations here are just like walking on Mars but down on Earth.
The water activities, which were snorkeling and glass bottom boating, gave us a chance to see the marine ecosystems that make this one of the very pretty colorful activities of the week. The diverse marine life and the different colors of its inhabitants kept us busy looking everywhere. At the same time, the tranquility of the ocean makes us just feel like we also belong here.
Puerto Egas on Santiago Island, the last afternoon in this tropical archipelago, was like a summary of the week on board the National Geographic Endeavour. We saw a variety of endemic and native plants. We also saw the remains of what was once a salt mine. The beautiful lava fields extended over the shore line, and have become the home for a variety of species of shore migratory birds like plovers, ruddy turn stones, herons, oyster catchers and many others that we talked about during our walk.
The grottos at the end of the trail are wonderful geological formations, which the Galápagos fur sea lions have decided to proclaim as their habitat. They are easily seen around the formations and let us get very close to them. This gave us a wonderful opportunity to talk about the physical differences between the two mammal creatures of this island.
As we headed back to the ship, we took the inner trail that led to the beach in Puerto Egas. This trail closed up our trip with a personal approach to some of the land birds that made the islands popular. Darwin’s finches, mockingbirds, doves and the curious flycatcher that landed on one of our guests heads… it seems like things have not changed much over time; early visitors of the islands and Darwin himself said that birds here just perched on visitors without really much concern.
What a beautiful way to end our Galápagos experience… this place for sure will stay with us for the rest of our lives.
