Santiago Island
Located at the central part of the archipelago, Santiago, or James Island, is unique due to its exuberant flora, fauna and natural history; this was the Darwin’s most visited island and icon of conservation efforts.
Early in the morning we headed to our first destination, Espumilla beach. Its landing beach looked greenish with several sea turtles, and flocks of blue footed boobies were looking for fish, diving tirelessly. We walked inland along a forest of exuberant vegetation, the most attractive to admire being the huge incense trees with branches covered with lichens still remaining on their green leaves.
After breakfast, we repositioned the National Geographic Endeavour just in front of Buccaneers Cove, an enigmatic place well known by ancient pirates who went ashore to resupply their ships. Our guests could take different choices: glass bottom boat, snorkeling and kayaking. The incredible underwater world showed us a huge school of black stripped salemas, sea turtles and white tipped reef sharks. In the air, blue footed boobies in a feeding frenzy tried to catch some fish; we observed several boobies underwater, with their bodies like perfect arrows chasing salemas helped by sea lions that moved the huge bank of fish near to the surface. It was amazing to see sea lions and blue footed boobies collaborating together.
In the afternoon, the National Geographic Endeavour dropped anchor in front of Egas Brothers Bay. It was very sunny with a magnificent view of the highlands and the famous Sugar Loaf Hill. We headed to the black landing beach and walked along the intertidal zone of the island. The first attraction was a couple of blue footed boobies with their chick, just beside the nest; normally boobies don’t nest along this area. It was low tide; therefore it was possible to walk along the wet rocks observing many sea shore birds such as plovers, whimbrels, ruddy turnstones, American oyster catchers and several herons.
We observed many marine iguanas basking up their bodies on the beaches and some terrestrial birds cleaning their skins from parasites. It was interesting to observe finches and yellow warblers interacting with the sea life.
We finally arrived to the grottos, where fur sea lions were the delight of our guests. Their faces, looking like bears, showed us the great difference with the Galápagos sea lions, the commonest along the islands. Our guests could discover a great many fissures where they found lava and yellow crowned night herons while in the calm waters, and sea turtles showed us their unmistakable heads. Along the west, Isabela Island looked majestic with the sun hiding its last beams, telling us the day was over. We headed back to our home during this week, our dear National Geographic Endeavour, thinking about those incredible and innocent creatures we observed today.
