In the early hours of the day we arrived at Darwin Bay, located on Genovesa Island. This bay is a large caldera and one out of two that we find on this extinct volcano. Our day started with a pre-breakfast kayak outing along the cliffs of Darwin Bay that allowed us to observe and listen to the sounds of the thousands of birds that exist here.
After breakfast, and with some of our guests, we landed on Darwin Bay and went onto Prince Phillip’s Steps. From there, we devoted our time to the observation of seabirds such as Nazca boobies, great and magnificent frigatebirds, red-footed boobies, Galapagos storm petrels, and swallow-tailed gulls. After our morning’s walks we went snorkeling along the cliffs of Darwin Bay and found several species of colorful fish such as parrot fish, Moorish idols, Mexican hogfish, king angel fish, and lots of razor-tailed surgeon fish. Some of our guests were followed all along by a curious and very playful Galapagos sea lion.
This afternoon we switched sites and kept being marveled at by the large numbers of seabirds found all along the way on both sites. We found several Galapagos fur seals resting on the rocks by the cliffs. We also found small groups of Galapagos marine iguanas which, on this island, are the smallest in size compared to the other populations found on the rest of the archipelago.
We returned aboard and said farewell to the islands and celebrated another great journey in Galapagos.
