Santiago Island
For our early-morning, pre-breakfast outing, we disembarked at Espumilla Beach on Santiago Island. Located in the central area of the Galápagos, the beach offers the opportunity to see a beautiful mangrove forest that protects the nests of the Pacific green sea turtles. The mangroves in this case also act as a natural barrier which keeps the brackish water lagoon apart from the ocean; in the lagoon we found the Bahamas white chick pintail ducks and a couple of whimbrels. As we headed up for our hike we found some incredibly old Palo Santos trees that are magnificent in size. As we walked through the woods of the Galápagos we could hear the singing of the warblers, finches, mockingbirds and fly catchers.
After breakfast the National Geographic Endeavour repositioned to Buccaneer’s Cove for our morning activities; it was great to be at the very place were the HMS Beagle stopped to drop Charles Darwin, who spent nine days exploring the island. Here we offered snorkeling, kayaking and Zodiac rides; conditions were not easy today, but after some intent we did have a chance to see big schools of surgeon fish feeding on the rocks.
Puerto Egas, located on the northwestern side of Santiago, was our destination this afternoon. Some people went to a black volcanic sand beach, some went snorkeling and the rest went for a wonderful hike along the coast, where we found some interesting lava formations known as grottos. The grottos are the habitat of the fur sea lions that we found lying on the shaded areas of the rocks.
What a beautiful afternoon we had; different species of shore birds, lots of marine iguanas, American oystercatchers – and much more – kept us looking everywhere. As we headed back to the ship at sunset we could only admire the power of nature undisturbed!
