Today we arrived to the western side of Santiago Island. Our early wakeup call allowed us to see the sunrise and the heavy rain that stopped at our disembarkation point. We wet-landed at Espumilla Beach, a place made of an interesting combination of volcanic ashes and tiny pieces of the green, semi-precious stone olivine, where we spotted tracks made by sea turtle and holes made by ghost crabs. We walked along a mangrove forest, by the beach, and we got to see blue-footed boobies and a mockingbird. Pelicans were fishing and made our morning!
Later in the morning we had breakfast and navigated to Buccaneer Cove. Here we had a number of activities such as kayaking, enjoying the impressive landscape of the place, and snorkeling. A rockslide broke the monotony of the cliffs and invigorated the kayakers as material rushed down into the depth of the ocean. During the snorkeling we spotted Surgeonfish, king angelfish, Moorish idols, parrotfish, snappers, grunts, Galápagos sea lions, white-tipped reef sharks, eagle rays, and many others species of reef fish. The water visibility was great and water temperature warm and nice.
Then we had lunch on board. In the afternoon we landed on the black volcanic sandy beach of Puerto Egas, some of our guests went crazy with the sea lion show! We had the chance to walk along the coast where we found some interesting lava formations known as grottos, fur seal lions and Galápagos sea lions laying all over, different species of shore birds including semi-palmate plovers, sanderlings, ruddy turnstones, lots of marine iguanas, American oystercatchers, and much more. After witnessing a cloudy sunset we headed back to the National Geographic Islander. This was a great day in paradise…
