Bartolomé & Sombrero Chino Islands
What a wonderful time we had today!
Early in the morning we arrived at Bartolomé for a 372-foot walk to the top of this small but impressive island. We call this place “the open book for geology,” as we can see different pyroclastic material from young volcanoes. Once on top, we saw the impressive view: the world-famous Pinnacle Rock was in front of us, surrounded by several parasitic cones. What a great sight!
After a well-deserved breakfast on board, we approached a superb shoreline for our water activities: glass-bottom boating and deep water snorkeling, or swimming and relaxing on the beach. Today the water temperature and visibility were ideal under the warm equatorial sun; even at the beach Galápagos penguins gave us an impressive “fishing show” while developing speeds we can only dream of. As soon as we were all back on board we started navigating to our next destination, Sombrero Chino. Meanwhile, Naturalist Aura Banda gave us an impressive talk about the human history of the Galápagos Islands.
The National Geographic Endeavour anchored at our visitors’ site for the afternoon, Sombrero Chino, or Chinese Hat. Our first activity was snorkeling in a small channel between Chinese Hat and Santiago’s coast. This snorkeling site was very different from the one this morning, yet it had great underwater wildlife: parrot fishes, king angels, black-striped salemas, sergeant majors and many others. For the non-snorkelers, the beach was a great spot to play in the sand and enjoy the company of Galápagos sea lions.
We headed back onboard as the sun set and soon we shared our photos and talked about the highlights of our expedition over dinner.
