Roca Redonda, Isabela & Fernandina Island
This time the National Geographic Polaris took us to the western part of the Archipelago, where we had a spectacular time from the very beginning to the very last minute of the day.
At 6:30 am we circumnavigated Roca Redonda, this huge rock from far away looks like a glacier, but once we approached it we could see thousand of sea birds such as: Galápagos shear waters, storm petrels, Nazca boobies, frigate birds and lots of Wilson phalaropes.
And then we started heading back to cross the famous Equatorial line for the second time. All our youngest guests had a ceremony at the bow of the National Geographic Polaris, and the rest were in the outer decks waiting for the ship’s horn, and in less than a second we were back in the southern hemisphere again.
We finally anchored at Pta Vicente Roca, lowered our Zodiacs and went out to explore and look for the largest and oddest looking fish on earth, and we were very successful in finding it. This fish is known as Mola mola or Pacific Ocean Sun Fish, apart from that we saw Galápagos penguins, flightless cormorants the largest marine iguanas and many sea birds.
After this beautiful adventure we came back on board and got ready to go out again, this time to explore the underwater world with the help of flippers, wetsuits and masks. And it was an excellent adventure.
We returned to the ship at noon for lunch and a much deserved siesta. Our last activity of the day was exploration of the youngest Island in Galápagos, Fernandina Is. This is a place with no introduced species at all, and that’s the reason why it is called a pristine island. While walking on the Island we visited some tidal pools with lots of turtles, and we could get close to Flightless Cormorants, lots of Marine Iguanas and the main predator of this place the Galápagos hawk, and beautiful lava Cactus Forest.
After this visit we got an idea of how the different species arrived to this inhospitable place, and they are called the Pioneer Species. What a wonderful day we had in this part of the world in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
This time the National Geographic Polaris took us to the western part of the Archipelago, where we had a spectacular time from the very beginning to the very last minute of the day.
At 6:30 am we circumnavigated Roca Redonda, this huge rock from far away looks like a glacier, but once we approached it we could see thousand of sea birds such as: Galápagos shear waters, storm petrels, Nazca boobies, frigate birds and lots of Wilson phalaropes.
And then we started heading back to cross the famous Equatorial line for the second time. All our youngest guests had a ceremony at the bow of the National Geographic Polaris, and the rest were in the outer decks waiting for the ship’s horn, and in less than a second we were back in the southern hemisphere again.
We finally anchored at Pta Vicente Roca, lowered our Zodiacs and went out to explore and look for the largest and oddest looking fish on earth, and we were very successful in finding it. This fish is known as Mola mola or Pacific Ocean Sun Fish, apart from that we saw Galápagos penguins, flightless cormorants the largest marine iguanas and many sea birds.
After this beautiful adventure we came back on board and got ready to go out again, this time to explore the underwater world with the help of flippers, wetsuits and masks. And it was an excellent adventure.
We returned to the ship at noon for lunch and a much deserved siesta. Our last activity of the day was exploration of the youngest Island in Galápagos, Fernandina Is. This is a place with no introduced species at all, and that’s the reason why it is called a pristine island. While walking on the Island we visited some tidal pools with lots of turtles, and we could get close to Flightless Cormorants, lots of Marine Iguanas and the main predator of this place the Galápagos hawk, and beautiful lava Cactus Forest.
After this visit we got an idea of how the different species arrived to this inhospitable place, and they are called the Pioneer Species. What a wonderful day we had in this part of the world in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
