Fernandina and Isabela Island (Punta Espinoza & Punta Vicente Roca)

We navigated toward the youngest island of the Galápagos archipelago, the most pristine jewel in the crown. Over the very calm waters of Bolivar Canal the National Geographic Endeavor navigated, when we soon saw the first signs of La Cumbre Volcano, which is the mother volcano that created the island of Fernandina. During the navigation we were lucky to encounter a couple of tropical whales: a mother and its calf, surfacing and swimming along our route.

We finally arrived to the westernmost island of the archipelago, and had a dry landing at a place guarded by mangroves around its entrance, a place known as Punta Espinoza… The “land of endemic wonders” I call it—some big, some small, but tons of them, dark and marine—yes! Hundreds of marine iguanas sitting on the very young lava fields, warming up and digesting; perfectly camouflaged with the rusty volcanic black lava. As we followed our trail, cormorants and pelicans were spotted, young sea lions offered us quite a playful show and a couple of American oystercatchers were nesting!

A snorkeling outing took us to explore the underwater life around Fernandina; some Pacific green sea turtles welcomed us with a nice and gentile swimming experience right next to them, some endemic cormorants and penguins were also in the water sharing their agile hydrodynamic movements around some of us. On our way back from snorkeling we spotted another pair of tropical whales, this time feeding around the area, being accompanied by many shearwaters feeding on the leftovers of these filter-feeder whales.

We soon navigated to the second-youngest island—this one being the largest of all—known as Isabela. We had a zodiac ride outing around the giant cliffs of a collapsed caldera and some of us were lucky to spot another tropical whale (five whales spotted today!). Along the shoreline were various penguins and cormorants, blue-footed boobies flying, some sitting on the compacted ash walls. It certainly was a place like no other, where we could see species that came from the northern and southern hemispheres (sea lions and penguins), sitting together on the same rock here in the enchanted archipelago…

The blue heart of the planet on the western side of the Galápagos is very rich in marine life, and shared with us its wonderful creations today.