Santiago Island (Espumilla Beach Buccaneer’s Cove and James Bay)
We had an early hike today at a very interesting visitor site situated on the island of Santiago; a very interesting place known as Espumilla beach, where we saw ancient incense trees and very old mangroves making a nice habitat for birds and small reptiles on this island.
Later we had the chance to snorkel at a different visitor site on the same island. This time we navigated to Buccaneer’s Cove, a place well known for its famous visitors back in the 17th century who were looking for giant tortoises as resources. Some of us had the chance to go on the glass-bottom boat and kayak along the amazing cliffs on this place. We were lucky to see a white tip reef shark, yellow puffer fish, and a bunch of colorful fish from the glass-bottom boat. The ones who went snorkeling were lucky to play with some Galápagos sea lions.
In the afternoon we arrived at James Bay. After a wet landing on a black sandy beach some of us decided to stay and snorkel with some sea turtles and rays from the beach, while others went on a great hike along the coastline looking for shore migratory birds and the very rare Galápagos fur sea lions, which can be found in the rocky grottos in the between the lava flows next to the ocean.
