Bartolomé and Santiago Islands
This small but impressive island was at its best today. Bartolomé Island it is often compared with the moon landscape, but I consider that it looks more than Mars for it has a reddish coloration. As we started, before breakfast, our visit at 6:30 the climate was still pleasantly fresh, The morning dew miniature drops of water were seen on the tiny lives of the pioneer light green and grayish plants of Tiquilia and Chamaesyceae, the latter a plant of the Euphorbiaceae . Personally, I like to go to the top of Bartolomé early before the sun is too strong. In addition, it is possible to see young Galapagos sea lions just waking up after a long night sleeping at the disembarkation area or on the near beach. Galapagos lava lizards are still hidden under the Tiquilia plants just as if they were the owners of these plants; they get shelter and feed on the beautiful white tiny flowers of this plant.
A wooden stairway helped us to go all the way to the summit of one of the main tuff cones of the island. This geological formation that is several thousand years old has formed interesting shapes as lava tubes and channels can be seen around the whole island. Once at the summit, a spectacular view was awaiting for us. We saw the beach where we were going to swim later on in the morning as well as a volcanic formation with a pinnacle shape pointed to the sky, the famous Pinnacle Rock.
After having our delightful breakfast and geared up with snorkeling equipment we landed on this volcanic orange brown beach found next to the pinnacle. Calm waters surrounded us this morning; ideal conditions for our first immersion and for guests who were learning. Several guests came back happy after spotting white tipped reef sharks. Some that were at the beach witnessed a territorial fight between two adult lava gulls along the beach.
After a traditional Ecuadorian feast that was served as lunch we navigated with the National Geographic Islander to Santiago Island. This island, pirates’ land in the recent past, it is also known as James or San Salvador Island. Santiago has an impressive landscape of tuff cones and sediment formations that makes this island apart from the others in the archipelago. The Charles Darwin Research Station together with the Galapagos National Park started a program back in the year 1988 to eradicate feral goats, pigs, donkeys and rats that were decimating the island with the strong support of Lindblad Expeditions. This program was so successful that by the year 2006 all pigs and goats were completely eradicated.
This afternoon our guests enjoyed a fairly easy walk along the intertidal zone looking at sea lions, several shore birds, Sally light foot crabs, endemic marine iguanas and Galapagos fur seals. The latter seals were seen swimming gracefully in spectacular grottos. We came back to the ship with the last rays of sun after watching a glorious sunset.
