Bartolomé & Santiago Islands
We started our second expedition day visiting two different Islands located at the central part of the Galápagos archipelago. Early in the morning we went ashore for a pre-breakfast walk. Our objective was to get to a nice viewpoint from right on top of Bartolomé Island, 345 feet above sea level. All of us made it and had the pleasure of enjoying one of the most photographed landscapes of the archipelago, Pinnacle Rock.
This island also showed us a lot of geological formations. This gave us the sensation of walking on a different planet because of the different colors in the volcanic material we could observe.
After climbing 372 steps during our morning walk, we went back on board for a well-deserved breakfast. Later in the morning we landed on a beautiful golden sandy beach at Bartolomé for our aquatic activities. Some of us went snorkeling, some others went for a walk and swimming. Those who snorkeled saw white tipped reef sharks and lots of colorful fish.
In the afternoon we dropped the anchor at Egas Port, situated at the northwestern part of Santiago Island. We started our activities doing some snorkeling. This site has a big black volcanic sandy beach and a dark sea bottom that gave us a great snorkeling opportunity, since we could see a lot of colorful fish in contrast with the sea floor.
Shortly afterwards we went for a hike along the coastal part of the Island, walking on white sand and black lava fields throughout the intertidal zone. We came across shore birds such as oyster catchers and striated herons, who were hunting right in front of us. We also saw the two different species of sea lions found in the Galápagos: the Galápagos sea lion and the Galápagos fur sea lion.
As we were coming back from our walk we could see some finches as well as Galápagos doves. We went back on board right on time to enjoy the sunset!
