Santiago Island
It does not matter if it’s cloudy or sunny, if it’s dry or rainy, if the winds blow from the south or the west or the north. Every day here is spectacular; we are in the Galápagos Islands to see it all! To explore it all! And so we did today beginning early in the morning. With calm seas bathing the beach of Espumilla Bay, we landed and accomplished our goal: to hike through gigantic holy trees when the sun was just beginning to warm this part of planet earth. Some Galápagos hawks were on mangroves to give us a warm welcome to our adopted island, and land finches, mockingbirds, and flight catchers were starting their activities to survive in this magnificent but hard ecosystem. After breakfast we dedicated our energy to learn about the sea, either by kayak, glass bottom boat or snorkeling. We moved to Buccaneer cove, a place visited by Charles Darwin in 1835, and the place he stayed the longest. He spent nine days here collecting specimens and getting more ideas for his masterpiece book.
This place showed to us all the diverse marine flora and fauna that these islands have, such as puffers, sea urchins, parrots fishes, sea stars, and more. Suddenly a quite big pod of bottled nose dolphins joined a few guests in the water, briefly, but a few seconds of such an affair with animals in the wild is the equivalent to almost reaching the moon. The dolphins stayed with us for a few hours around the area, and before lunch they circumnavigated our ship and said goodbye.
Later we moved to Puerto Egas, another visitor site not far from the cove. Here our travelers enjoyed a small black beach made of pieces of basalt, with some sea lions resting on it.
The snorkeling site in the afternoon was great, with a collection of pretty much every animal we wanted to find underwater, from sharks to sea turtles.
Then the hike had rewards such as fur sea lions, marine iguanas, sea gulls, mockingbirds, colorful marine iguanas, some migratory birds and the very powerful Galápagos hawks.
Tomorrow we’ll have a new adventure; it’s a day for tortoises, so we are ready for any kind of terrain and weather. We are exploring an archipelago so pristine and unique, that we feel as if we were the very first visitors ever to see the Galápagos Islands.
Sunset comes very fast at the equator, and some our traveler’s wanted to see the green flash, which appears when the sun hides behind the horizon with certain conditions. You might see it, and personally I only saw it twice, which was maybe a magic moment of imagination!
