Los Islotes & Espiritu Santo Island
As the day’s light began working wonders, we were already in view of those two small islands called Los Islotes (the Islets). We anchored to the south of them, had breakfast, and immediately set out to snorkel with the marvelous sea lions that call these red rocky islets home. A plethora of fish surprised us: sergeant majors, angels of different color, and many invertebrates, especially the urchins. The sea lions in the water, mostly 6-month olds played with us, showing off their swimming proficiency to us poor land animals.
The islets are also home to a great number of sea birds, namely magnificent frigate birds, turkey vultures, blue-footed and brown boobies, and yellow-footed gulls. To our surprise, we saw a golden eagle flying around the islets.
The California sea lions are quite abundant, and lay sunning themselves in all available flat rocks, barking and in general making a racket. The adult females are all pregnant at this time, with the birth of the new ones scheduled to occur in June and July.
At midday we turned around, and headed south along the island of Espiritu Santo, to its southernmost point, having seen some dolphins along the way. As we reached our afternoon destination, we enjoyed our senses with a good number of bottlenose dolphins again, some of which bow rode us for short periods. As we turned toward our final destination of the day, two humpback whales were seen. It was an adult female and her calf, which probably weren’t too happy with our presence, as they soon disappeared. So we directed our ship to Playa Dispensa, on the southern tip of this magnificent island.
