Española Island
This is the beginning of our expedition in the Galápagos Islands. And this is our first full day in this paradise. We started our activities early today with kayaking before breakfast. Believe it or not it is one of the most popular activities. It is very enjoyable in the early hours and you often have sea lions playing around your kayak!
After breakfast we loaded up the Zodiacs bound for different destinations for the different activities; some of us explored the undersea world from the glass-bottomed boat, and it was fantastic; we even saw sharks! Others explored it from much closer and they went to snorkel. The snorkeling site has a lot of varieties of tropical fish as well as sea lions, which are very playful with the snorkelers. It was lots of fun.
Later on we landed at Gardner Bay located on the north side of Española Island where we spent the rest of the morning exploring the site. Here the walk on the beach was dreamlike. It was full of sea lions, the water was calm and warm and the sun was shining. It was the perfect place for a walk as well as swimming and photographing.
In the afternoon we pulled up the anchor and we moved to a different place on the same island. This time we landed at Punta Suarez and we explored the shoreline and the forest. At this time of the year the vegetation is very green due to the rains. But it won’t last much longer; soon the rains will stop and we’ll enter the dry season and it will be the beginning of the massive nesting season for most of the marine birds of the Galápagos Islands.
We ended the day with a fantastic outing as we visited the nesting areas of the Galápagos marine iguanas and the breeding grounds of the Nazca boobies.
