Santiago’s amazing landscapes have captivated visitors for hundreds of years. Explorers, whalers, buccaneers all explored the island, and gave it different names: Santiago, James or San Salvador.
The famous expedition of Charles Darwin in 1835 explored Santiago more times than any other place in the Galapagos.
In 1923 William Beebe came to the islands and also visited Santiago, his description of the island reminds me of our walk today at Sullivan Bay: “James was sinister with suggestion of recent volcanic outbreaks. The lofty central craters had evidently long been dead, but the lesser ones along the outer shoulders had spilled over recently, and crucified the island with layer after layer of lava, dead and black at present, rugged and jagged, with crevices and crevasses in every direction.”
Today we explored Santiago Island. In the morning, an impressive spatter cone known as Chinese Hat. In the afternoon we visited a recent lava flow called Sullivan Bay. The landscape amazed us just as it did to the early explorers.
The highlight for many of us was to finally see the unique Galapagos penguin from our zodiacs. The population is small, as it is the only penguin that lives on the equatorial area, and it depends on upwells of cold water. But today we saw them twice, first one lonely penguin fishing along the shores of Chinese Hat, later at sunset we saw five penguins coming back from fishing to rest on the shore.
The mixture of warm and cold waters make of the Galapagos a unique place, this is reflected on the species that live here. Today our example was seeing penguins in two locations and during our navigation, spotting flamingos from the ship. Penguins and flamingos on the same day… just in the Galapagos!
Snorkelling brought sharks and rays to our list, as well as new species of fish and colourful sea stars. Our walk along the new lava field of Sullivan made us imagine the beginning of the islands, when everything was layer after layer of lava. Another amazing day on this archipelago full of wildlife and outstanding landscapes, the place that William Beebe called: the world’s end.
