Española Island
Española Island: pure, pristine, magical! These are just some of the superlatives that come to my mind when I see a place like this. Being the easternmost island of the Galápagos Archipelago, Española is considered among the oldest. Its beauty is characterized by the spectacular cliffs on the eastern side of the island, used yearly by the famous waved albatross, which has only just made it back to the archipelago.
The albatross has been absent from the Galápagos ever since their chicks finally fledged and the heat started to build up around their nesting areas, at the beginning of this year. Weekly, we had landed hoping to get a glimpse of one of the last chicks leaving the island or perhaps a juvenile wandering too close to the coast, caught in the wrong winds, but nothing happened. Today was not the case. Last week we encountered, to our surprise, the first couple of these magnificent birds on land! This week we landed hoping those albatross were still there, and that the sighting had not just been a chance, one-off encounter. To our delight, there were even more of them on land, and large rafts floating offshore! It was really exciting to look for them, and even better to get the first glimpse of some males coming back first, to impatiently await the arrival of the females (same old story, by the way!).
The albatross are back, and we are here, there is nothing else we feel we could ask for today or the rest of the trip, but we know better than that as there is so much more to see in a magical place like Galápagos.
Española Island: pure, pristine, magical! These are just some of the superlatives that come to my mind when I see a place like this. Being the easternmost island of the Galápagos Archipelago, Española is considered among the oldest. Its beauty is characterized by the spectacular cliffs on the eastern side of the island, used yearly by the famous waved albatross, which has only just made it back to the archipelago.
The albatross has been absent from the Galápagos ever since their chicks finally fledged and the heat started to build up around their nesting areas, at the beginning of this year. Weekly, we had landed hoping to get a glimpse of one of the last chicks leaving the island or perhaps a juvenile wandering too close to the coast, caught in the wrong winds, but nothing happened. Today was not the case. Last week we encountered, to our surprise, the first couple of these magnificent birds on land! This week we landed hoping those albatross were still there, and that the sighting had not just been a chance, one-off encounter. To our delight, there were even more of them on land, and large rafts floating offshore! It was really exciting to look for them, and even better to get the first glimpse of some males coming back first, to impatiently await the arrival of the females (same old story, by the way!).
The albatross are back, and we are here, there is nothing else we feel we could ask for today or the rest of the trip, but we know better than that as there is so much more to see in a magical place like Galápagos.
