Bartolomé & Santiago Island

Very early in a beautiful morning we had a pre-breakfast outing to hike over 368 wooden steps leading to a very barren and interesting moonscape looking land on Bartolomé Island. As we headed further towards the highest point on the island we got to explore the wonders of the Galápagos geology: Parasitic Cones, Scoria cones, Tuff (compacted ash) and Lava fields; it was just like going back in time and walking the pages of an open geology book.
We had a wonderful morning; the sun was just perfect, allowing us to enjoy the great view of the Northern and Southern beach of island with its famous pinnacle rock.

Later on, we had a great chance to explore the underwater world of the enchanted archipelago where some of us had spotted some white tipped reef sharks, rays, and many species of tropical fish just swimming around the rocky reef. The water looked very inviting for a swim. Some of us chose to jump in, while others went for a walk to explore the nesting area of the green sea turtles.

During our afternoon expedition, we had a wet landing on a black sand beach at Egas Port on Santiago Island. The snorkeling was just great; some of our guests got to swim with spotted eagle rays, sea lions and schools of pelagic fish.

The hike took us to a different world along the coast of the visitor site, getting a taste of what Darwin saw during the 9 days he spent on this island. The top predator on land was sighted, the Galápagos hawk. We also saw blue-footed boobies fishing off the coast and many shore birds feeding on the small crustaceans on the lava fields exposed from the very low tide. It was a perfect place to compare the two species of sea lions found in the archipelago. We explored collapsed lava tubes holding sea water, which makes a perfect habitat for the Galápagos fur seals (really a type of sea lion). These areas are known as “Grottos”.

Today we had an outstanding expedition, perfect weather, unique flora and fauna, a lot of interesting knowledge shared with a great group of expeditioners in the enchanted archipelago.