Santiago Island is located in the central realm of Galapagos, and this was the island that we explored today. We started our day on the western side of Santiago, where we had a wet landing on Espumilla beach, and from there we hiked to the top of an extinct cone which rewarded us with a spectacular view of the bay where our ship was anchored. This bay is also a very important nesting site for green sea turtles, and we saw several new nests along the coast.
After breakfast, we moved to another visitor site known as Buccaneers cove, where we had the opportunity to offer snorkeling, kayaking and also had several outings on our glass bottom boat. The water was warm and visibility was excellent, so we were able to see many different species of fish and invertebrates along the cliffs of this cove.
This afternoon, we went ashore on a different site known as Puerto Egas, where we found the ruins of an old salt mine from the sixties. As we walked along the trail, we found Galapagos fur seals, Galapagos marine iguanas, a great blue heron catching small fish from an intertidal pool, and a very curious Galapagos flycatcher that kept coming straight towards our cameras. We also had some light, refreshing rain towards the end of our walk, thus ending our a wonderful day on Santiago Island.
