Bartolomé Island is a field guide of volcanic features. This island is dotted with numerous reddish cones and small craters, giving it a “moonscape” appearance. Today we are ready to explore this magical place early in the morning, at 6:30 a.m. we disembarked on a little pier and then a wooden staircase that would lead us to the summit of Bartolomé. Along our way we could observe some lava lizards and endemic vegetation of the place, like the gray mat plant, a very small shrub that covered the tuff that formed the secondary volcano that we were climbing up. Once on the top we observed a breathtaking view of the most famous landscape of the Enchanted Islands: Pinnacle Rock, the eroded remnants of a tuff cone, which stands tall in the middle of Sullivan Bay.
We had a lot of fun and with the same good mood we came back to our ship for breakfast. After breakfast we moved onto a beautiful golden beach for snorkeling and swimming. The shoreline of Bartolomé is extremely rich in marine life, so our fearless snorkelers could easily find large schools of razor surgeonfish, pink cardinal fish and even some flounders. A Galapagos penguin came close to the shore to swim with some of our intrepid guests! At the base of Pinnacle Rock other snorkelers spotted a white tip reef shark resting at the sea bed. At the beach, a couple of American oystercatchers were feeding on some mollusks and some sea lions were basking on the hot sand. What I am describing here seems like a dream, seems unreal. While the scenery and events are hard to believe, once you experience them, they become real.
In the afternoon we motored to Sombrero Chino Islet, off the coast of the large island of Santiago. Alongside a massive young lava flow, we had a second opportunity to snorkel today. The underwater world here is quite varied, from small damselfishes to parrot fishes, puffers and more white-tipped reef sharks. The unique marine iguanas, the only true sea-going lizard in the world and endemic to the Galapagos archipelago, feeds here, as well as some fast-swimming Galapagos penguins that came by, too busy hunting their prey to pay attention to us. After snorkeling, we returned on board. Then some of us went for a zodiac ride along the rocky shore; we could photograph the wildlife and at the same time we enjoyed the amazing volcanic landscapes while clouds turned orange and reddish giving us a very special and unforgettable feeling!
