Española Island
Special Note: The video included with today's Daily Expedition Report features Aadith Moorthy, winner of the 2010 National Geographic Bee. The Bee is a geography contest for schools with students in grades four through eight. It involves thousands of schools and millions of students. Aadith Moorthy and his parents traveled with this week's expedition, as one of the Champion's prizes. Please click on the video above to hear about his experiences.
As we disembarked at Punta Suarez, we encountered, right away, lava lizards, marine iguanas, mockingbirds, sea lions, hawks, blue-footed boobies, Nazca boobies, frigate birds, finches and many more species. It was difficult to continue with our hike because of the abundance of life, but we had something else to offer: waved albatrosses.
To see them, we had to walk about a mile to get to the area where they nest. Our younger explorers had their own mission, and it was to count the number of immature albatrosses; they counted 36 of them, all along the trail. These juveniles cannot glide yet, but we noticed their flying feathers starting to emerge from their bodies. In a few weeks, by the end of December, all of them will jump off the cliff and leave the Enchanted Islands to the ocean which will be their home for five years; they will then return to their home island to look for a mate to be their partner for the rest of their lives, because they are monogamous.
Española is truly an amazing place to visit because many of the species live only here and nowhere else in the archipelago. This was a very intense morning, with lots of sightings and excitement.
For the afternoon we had several options at Gardener Bay. We started disembarkation with glass-bottom boaters; followed by those going deep-water snorkeling at a tiny islet off the coast, and a third group was sent to one of the most enjoyable beaches in the Galápagos, great for snorkeling lessons. The beach is made of organic material and is covered with friendly Galápagos sea lions, from pups to alpha males. Of course, for those who wanted more exercise we had an extra activity: kayaking along the coast of Gardner Bay.
