Santiago Island
In the early hours of the day we headed ashore for a walk on Santiago Island. We went to Espumilla beach, which is one of the most important nesting areas for the Pacific green sea turtles in Galapagos. As we arrived we found a couple of females slowly heading back to the sea. There were also two couples mating in the water and were surrounded by a few males.
As we began our walk we were carefully observed by some juvenile Galapagos hawks. We walked by an old Palo Santo forest with the tallest trees in the islands of this species.
We also admired the landscapes from the top of a very well eroded volcanic cone.
After our walk we returned aboard and navigated towards Buccaneer’s cove; this is one of the most scenic places in the archipelago and we had several activities around this area. We went snorkeling, kayaking or had a great time on our glass bottom boat observing the marine life from it.
After this great morning we lifted up anchor and headed to another location on Santiago Island; this time we went to a place known as Puerto Egas. This was a town in the sixties and now is abandoned with only a couple of small manmade structures. This afternoon some of our guests went snorkeling and later on we had a walk along the coast. There, we observed Galapagos marine iguanas, Galapagos sea lions and Galapagos fur seals.
Along the coast we also found a nest of an American oyster catcher with two small eggs. We also watched a sea lion blowing bubbles to catch a fish – it was a successful hunt.
As the afternoon was ending we returned to our ship and we were greeted by a small pod of playful bottle nosed dolphins right next to our ship; what a great way to end our day!
