Española Island
Today was our last full day in the Galápagos archipelago. We have been here for a while and still keep on finding new things. The Island we visited today was full of surprises. Because it is one of the oldest islands, it has a high degree of endemism so we got the chance to find not only species endemic to the Galápagos Islands, but endemic species just to Espanola Island.
Early in the morning we woke up at Gardner Bay, located on the northeastern part of Española Island. This is a huge white sandy coralline beach that has become the perfect habitat for the Galápagos sea lions. We had possibilities of doing kayaking, deep water snorkeling and a long walk along the coast to find sea lions.
The landscapes at this site were breathtaking. The diversity of fish we saw during the snorkeling was amazing, and all of us had close encounters with nature due to the amount of wildlife one can find on this island.
In the afternoon we repositioned the ship to visit Suarez Point, situated on the northeastern side of Espanola Island. We came here to do a hike, and we could not leave the Galápagos Islands without visiting Suarez Point first. This was one of the most diverse places that we saw during the entire week. There was so much diversity of species per square meter!
The stars of the walk were the sea birds. We saw finally the endemic Waved Albatross that comes every year to nest right on this site. Many of them were in flight. It was very special for us to see how these wonderful gliders remain in the air, just trapping the air currents and flying all the time without moving their wings. We also came across lots of Nazca boobies with their chicks, blue footed boobies, swallow tailed gulls, red billed tropic birds, Galápagos shear waters and three different species of Darwin’s finches.
There are no doubts that this was a good way to finish our trip in the Galápagos Islands. Every single Island has been different, and every island has its own highlight. On our way back to the ship we watched a nice sunset. All of us came back with great memories about Espanola and our trip that we never will forget!
