Santiago Island
Santiago is one of the most historical places in the Galápagos Archipelago, once visited by buccaneers, whalers and the famous naturalist, Charles Darwin. Our visitor sites for the day were Espumilla Beach, Buccaneer’s Cove and Egas Port.
Early this morning we had our first landing at Espumilla, a red volcanic sandy beach with a mangrove forest; this site is one of the most important nesting sites for the only sea turtle that nests in Galápagos, the green Pacific sea turtle. We saw some new turtle tracks and came across several species of Darwin’s finches.
Later in the morning, after our well-deserved breakfast, we offered kayaking, glass-bottom boating and deep-water snorkeling at Buccaneer’s Cove; these three different activities were the perfect mix to explore the coastal and marine ecosystem of the area.
In the afternoon we repositioned the National Geographic Endeavour to Egas Port, on the northwestern side of Santiago Island. Some of our guests went for a walk along the coast; many species of shorebirds were seen, but probably the two highlights were a Galápagos hawk hunting and the Galápagos fur sea lions.
Some guests opted to go deep-water snorkeling one more time, and the conditions were very good at this site; the stars of the snorkeling were the green sea turtles feeding and juvenile Galápagos sea lions.
There’s no doubt we had a great day today and we are looking forward to see what is coming tomorrow!
