Española Island
We started our day visiting Punta Suarez located on Española also known as Hood Island. This morning, as we started to disembark, we were greeted by sea lions, marine iguanas, and lots of Sally Lightfoot crabs. We walked carefully around them as we didn’t want to wake up the sleeping sea lions. Once on the beach, we were followed by the endemic Española mockingbirds while some lava lizards were actively hunting insects and flies. As we explored a little further into the island, we found Nazca boobies in full courtship; some of them already had eggs and few of the nests had full grown juveniles almost ready to go!
It was fun to simply look at the distance to observe the boobies plunge diving. There were also small flocks of albatross and several red billed tropic birds flying above our heads. Once we reached the cliff section of the island, we marveled ourselves with the famous blow hole and the large columns of water that were being shut from its interior. All of a sudden we found out that marine iguanas could fly for a couple of seconds, since one of them was caught by one of the waves and was pushed up by the strong force of the water through the hole.
Along the cliffs we encountered several albatross taking off; some of them went straight to the far ocean while some others hang out in the area for a while. After we left Punta Suarez, we sailed off to Gardner Bay. We spent our afternoon swimming, snorkeling, kayaking and taking a nice ride on the glass bottom boat. We enjoyed this wonderful time on Española knowing that this was just the beginning of a great week!
We started our day visiting Punta Suarez located on Española also known as Hood Island. This morning, as we started to disembark, we were greeted by sea lions, marine iguanas, and lots of Sally Lightfoot crabs. We walked carefully around them as we didn’t want to wake up the sleeping sea lions. Once on the beach, we were followed by the endemic Española mockingbirds while some lava lizards were actively hunting insects and flies. As we explored a little further into the island, we found Nazca boobies in full courtship; some of them already had eggs and few of the nests had full grown juveniles almost ready to go!
It was fun to simply look at the distance to observe the boobies plunge diving. There were also small flocks of albatross and several red billed tropic birds flying above our heads. Once we reached the cliff section of the island, we marveled ourselves with the famous blow hole and the large columns of water that were being shut from its interior. All of a sudden we found out that marine iguanas could fly for a couple of seconds, since one of them was caught by one of the waves and was pushed up by the strong force of the water through the hole.
Along the cliffs we encountered several albatross taking off; some of them went straight to the far ocean while some others hang out in the area for a while. After we left Punta Suarez, we sailed off to Gardner Bay. We spent our afternoon swimming, snorkeling, kayaking and taking a nice ride on the glass bottom boat. We enjoyed this wonderful time on Española knowing that this was just the beginning of a great week!
