Bartolomé Island
“What a beautiful place,” one of our guests exclaimed, as the Zodiac left behind the beach where we had just snorkeled.
Today we had an early start to witness a reddish sunrise; the atmosphere felt humid due to the yesterday’s rain.
The National Geographic Endeavour was anchored this morning at Bartolomé Island, one of our favorite stops. We were delighted to hike to its summit, on a board-walk that reveals some of the arid zone vegetation found in the Galápagos: Tiquilia nesiotica and Chamaesayce amplexicaulis, both pioneer plants. Both are now flowering, which is really unusual for these two species, given that they remain dormant in arid conditions throughout the year.
As we reached the summit of Bartolomé, we were delighted to see the famous Pinnacle Rock, where we would snorkel later in the morning.
We came back on board to enjoy a nutritious breakfast, and soon afterwards, we departed to our snorkeling activities and glass-bottom boat outing. We had a fantastic reef to discover…
Today’s water temperature was pleasant (82 degrees) and visibility was good, so we encountered large schools of parrot fish, damsels, stone-fish, sergeant majors, together with white-tipped reef sharks, sea lions, a lonely penguin and an octopus, to mention only a few!
Back to the National Geographic Endeavour, our Captain navigated our ship around the lava flows of James Island, to anchor her close to Chinese Hat. Here we spent this afternoon. We had several activities: kayaking, snorkeling and the sighting of a tiny white coralline beach, surrounded by the majestic volcano of Chinese Hat!
As we went back snorkeling, we continued to discover more of the underwater world. We spotted more Galápagos penguins, some in a frenetic courtship, uttering loud calls to each other, and we saw some of them mating. Today we counted an impressive number; some 30 penguins were spotted along the rugged shoreline!
We ended the perfect day with our traditional recap, an underwater video taken by the expedition team, and a preview of the video chronicle. Then we enjoyed a delicious barbeque on the outer decks, with the most pleasant temperature, and the sightings of a number of constellations.
