Espumilla Beach and Puerto Egas (Santiago Island)
It was a long day that included an early morning walk before breakfast at Espumilla Beach, cool weather, so it was not going to get hot during our walk, as we are already in the cool season in the Galápagos. Some of the “early risers” onboard left for the walk. Since we knew that the vegetation was going to be thick, one of the naturalists took a machete to open the trail a little bit. As expected some finches were observed during the walk, they also had to begin their day and start looking for food.
After returning back onboard, we had breakfast as we needed a lot of energy for the multiple activities that waited us. Kayaking, snorkeling or observing the undersea realm from the Glass Bottom Boat at Buccaneer Cove were the choices, some decided to do 2 of these, but it meant a very tight schedule for them. Others decided to relax more and just did one of the choices. For the snorkelers it was a great time to see a gigantic school of stripped salemas, an endemic fish, that basically covered the whole ocean floor, it was so thick that at certain places it was not possible to clearly see the bottom of the diving area. Between the stripped salemas several King angelfish swam.
During the afternoon we visited Puerto Egas, and got to snorkel off the beach or walk to the Fur seal Grottos to see these endemic marine mammals. After our arrival at the beach we saw a Galápagos Hawk circling above us, but the most interesting part was observing several blue-footed boobies circle and dive in the sea. There were probably schools of fish they could see from high above. Suddenly one turned and dived into the sea, after a few seconds it popped up like a buoy, took off and then tried again. Every now and then other blue-footed boobies just stood on a rock and observed as their colleagues dived and dived.
During the walk the landscape was unique, the tuff material after being eroded by the ocean has some peculiar shapes, as the sun hit it from the side it created shadows that allowed us to better appreciate the beauty of these natural formations. To complement this landscape marine iguanas and Sally Lightfoot crabs were scattered among the formations, it could not get better than this.
For the ones that stayed on the beach they had sea lions nearby, it all became even more interesting when some young sea lions decided to meet our young explorers. As the children swam in the water some young sea lions moved around them, looking at them, probably having as much interest in us as we had in them.
As we left the beach a few blue-footed boobies kept plunge diving, the light was getting low, so it was probably the last chance they had to get a fish, others blue-footed boobies were standing on the rocks, observing each other and us as we left the island.
