Bartolomé & Santiago Islands

We got an early start, six o’clock in the morning, when we woke up and got ready for a high intensity walk to the very top of Bartolomé Island; a very different view once again, new terrain for us… different types of volcanic formations that were covered in part by the fine mist called garúa.

When we set foot on the island it seemed like we were in a completely new world, the main reason for this being the very desert-like conditions on the island. In fact it looks very much like a whole new planet: some people say it is pretty much like walking on the moon, or maybe Mars? Well, no… this is a very tiny island named Bartolomé, only about 6.5 square miles in size and 370 feet high.

We were amazed at how environments can change so much in such short distances: the scenery was completely different from that on any of the previous islands we have seen before during this trip. We enjoyed not just the famous pinnacle rock, but the whole island dotted with its parasite cones were something out of the ordinary. But if just the scenery was not enough, some of the groups were welcomed by early-starter penguins who greeted us on our way in, as well as a large group of white-rumped storm petrels that surrounded us on our way back to the ship. These petrels got their name from Peter, the apostle of Jesus, who many people believe walked on water – and these is exactly what they where doing: walking slowly on the water just to be able to pick up plankton from the surface with their tiny beaks.

After breakfast, we chose different activities in the water: those among us who did not want to get wet got the chance to see a white-tipped reef shark from the glass bottom boat (thanks to our naturalist Franklin that kept diving in as many times as needed for us all to see the shark). This was very exciting and probably our best sighting, however besides the shark we also saw many of the different tropical fishes that we had seen before on our previous days. The golden beach on the northern part of Bartolomé was also filled with kids and snorkelers enjoying themselves in the marine ecosystem of the Galápagos Islands.

We repositioned to the west coast of Santiago Island in the afternoon, where we also kept ourselves pretty busy: while most of us experienced a last chance for some swimming and snorkeling, some of younger crowd had the opportunity for a panga-driving lesson with Zodiac driver Marco. Shortly afterwards, we all went on a hike along the coast of Puerto Egas, during which one of the strange highlights was the Galápagos scorpion, that was playing hard to get! In the intricate grottoes at the end of the walk, the famous Galápagos fur seals were also seen resting on the lava. jumping out of the water, a really surprising sighting were a couple of whale’s spouts just at the sun down.
Not bad at all for the last day of our trip!!!!