Good morning my dear adventurous travelers on board the National Geographic Islander, after a long navigation from the western most part of the archipelago overnight, this morning we are back in the central area of Galapagos Archipelago to continue our exploration. And this time we have the whole day to explore Santiago Island, which is the fourth largest Island in Galapagos.
This Island has one of the most successful eradication programs carried on by the Galapagos National Park Service, and that is the reason we offered a pre-breakfast morning activity to take full advantage of this majestic island. One group was sent out for kayaking along the coast of a very well-known historical place known as Buccaneer Cove. With lots of sea birds and our two endemic Galapagos sea lions, another group was sent out for a fast paced walked along the interior with dense vegetation and hundreds of male finches singing to attract a mate. They are taking advantage of the good conditions for breeding. A last group decided to disembark and walked a mile along the black sandy beach with thousands of turtle’s nests. The nesting season is almost over but lucky enough we saw a Pacific green sea turtle finishing covering its eggs. It was a very well deserved sighting for our early risers. Galapagos hawks came very close as we were embarking the Zodiacs to come back on board.
We continued our morning activity at Buccaneer’s Cove, with a Zodiac ride for those most interested in fantastic geological formation and bird watching. At the same time we had two groups of deep water snorkelers along the same area. It was very remarkable to see how both groups enjoyed the beauty of this visitor site at the same time.
The afternoon was dedicated to exploring one of the best places for tidal pool exploration in Galapagos. This visitor site is also well known for its failed attempt of colonization, and the name of this site was given after Hector Egas, when he came back in the late 1950s to start a salt mining operation without much success.
This hike itself couldn’t have been better that it was. The weather was very comfortable, light was at its best for this time of the day, the waves were hitting the coast line making this visit more vivid, the animal sightings hit the same standards of the morning activity.
I would love to describe the name of all the species we spotted on our amazing day, but instead I’m just going to mention that probably spotted 60% of the total found in the archipelago.
