On our last full day in the Galápagos our guest enjoyed Genovesa Island. The entire island is a seabird colony and our guest observed frigate birds, Nazca boobies, red-footed boobies, swallow tailed gulls, red-billed tropicbird and storm petrels.
While we visited this island our guest explored two different sites: Darwin Bay and Price Philip´s Steps. Both of these areas hold an impressive biodiversity.
Once at Darwin Bay besides observing and learning about the seabirds, our guest learned about the different adaptation that the prickly-pear cacti of this island have developed. Because these cacti thrive in an environment with out land iguanas and giant tortoises that in other Galapagos Islands prey on cacti they grow next to the ground and have soft needles.
In the afternoon on the way to Price Philip´s Steps our guest observed Galapagos fur seals shading from the sunlight in between the rocks. Once at the site everybody did a dry landing and immediately after climbed a 90 feet or 30 meters cliff where the Galapagos National Park Services has cemented some rock together and constructed a handrail. Once at the top of the precipice the terrain levelled up and our guest together with our expedition team initiated hiking on the trail. Next to the path we found a good number of Nazca-boobies that where raising young. As well we found a great number of red-footed boobies perched on palo santo trees. At the end of the trail we found short-eared owls that were capturing storm petrels that were going in and out of their nests.
In between the hikes our guest went on a snorkelling outing where they encounter new species of fish like the Moorish idol and Sunset wrasses. As well some other guest decided to enjoy kayaking expedition alone the cliff of Genovesa Island. On the way back to the National Geographic Endeavour II every body enjoyed watching a beautiful sunset over the horizon.
