Bartolomé & Sombrero Chino Islands
What a wonderful time we had today!
Early in the morning we arrived at Bartolomé for a 372-foot walk to the top of this small but impressive island. We call this place “the open book for geology,” as we can see different pyroclastic material from young volcanoes. Once on top, we saw the impressive view: the world-famous Pinnacle Rock was in front of us, surrounded by several parasitic cones. What a great sight!
After a well-deserved breakfast on board, we approached a superb shoreline for our water activities: glass-bottom boating and deep water snorkeling, or swimming and relaxing on the beach. Today the warm equatorial sun gave some balminess to the ocean as we swam under the sea; even at the beach the color came alive. As soon as we were all back on board we started navigating to our next destination, Sombrero Chino. Meanwhile, Naturalist Antonio Adrian gave us an impressive talk about Charles Darwin and his famous visit to the Galápagos Islands.
National Geographic Endeavour anchored at our visitor site for the afternoon, Sombrero Chino, or Chinese Hat. Our first activity was snorkeling in a small channel between Chinese Hat and Santiago’s coast. This snorkeling site was very different from the one this morning, yet it had great underwater wildlife: parrot fishes, king angels, black-striped salemas, sergeant majors and many others; overall, I think, the highlight was a white-tipped reef shark, which was most them impressive to many of us. For the lucky few who were surrounded by Galápagos penguins; there was one in particular who decided to probe with his bill, as if inspecting and playing to see our reactions. We were simply taken by this event, a moment in life we will never forget.
We headed back onboard as the sun set, and shared our photos and talked about the highlights of our expedition over an out-door barbeque dinner. Soon after, we had an impressive presentation from one of our guests who shared her experience of the Galápagos spread center with us.
We are all ready for bedtime as the ocean rocks us to sleep while the ship navigates to our last destination, the northern hemisphere.
