Bartolomé & Santiago Islands
At 6:30 am we were all ready for the earliest outing of the week! Most of our guests were excited as we told them that they would be hiking some more than 330 ft. up to see one of the most fantastic moon/mars volcanic landscapes. Indeed, Bartolomé offers a breathtaking view from its summit: cinder cones, lava tubes, lava fields and some of the islands close by such as Santiago, Rabida, Sombrero Chino, Pinzon, Santa Cruz, Daphne Major and Minor, Baltra and North Seymour!
We hiked seeing some interesting plants such as the Tiquilias, Chamaesyces, Scalesias and lava cactuses. From the top we saw a whale and so we decided to walk back to have a closer look at it. We got there and sure enough we were lucky and got to see a Humpback whale with its calf emerging now and again right by the our Zodiac in the shallow waters in between Bartholomew and Santiago. Wow this was quite a sight and we all had a wonderful view of them.
At 10:00 we went for a wet landing at the beach of Bartolomé, where we had the opportunity to swim and snorkel. Some of us went around the Pinnacle rock and had the chance to see white tip reef sharks, Galápagos penguins and lots of fish. Once we came back on board, Jeff our videographer, Cris the doctor, Ernesto one of our naturalists and I, decided to go and swim with the whales and of course Jeff took video footage of it. One of the best days of my life!!!
Today the kitchen served us all a delicious Ecuadorian buffet which everyone enjoyed very much while the National Geographic Islander was motoring towards Puerto Egas on James. We had a wet landing and we took off and walked along the coast of Puerto Egas and saw plenty of wildlife including marine iguanas, sea lions, mothers with pups, etc.
But this was not all; we also had the chance to encounter the shy fur seals. Some of them were out of the water and we could see how different they are from the sea lions. Others were swimming at the pools with 3 sea turtles at the time… what else for a single afternoon?
It was so nice, that it was almost dark when we left the island, but never mind, everyone had a big smile on their face!
