Bartolomé & Santiago Islands
What an exciting day our expedition brought us today! Early in the morning we climbed to the top of Bartolomé Island. This small, eroded island, just 0.4 square miles in size, is a marvelous open book for geology enthusiasts. Here we observed and learned about cinder and splatter cones, lava tubes and pioneer plants. Every single step on one of the 374 stairs to the summit, where we had a spectacular view, was worth the effort. After breakfast we headed out for a wet landing on a golden beach that is crowned by the famous pinnacle rock. We crossed over a dune and hiked on the southern beach, counting sea turtle tracks in the sand, watching the bright Sally Lightfoot crabs and finding sharks and mating turtles in the surf. Back at the landing beach our first snorkeling outing of the day was highly successful; we observed many tropical fish species and a good number of our guests had the thrill of swimming with Galápagos penguins feeding together with plunge diving blue-footed boobies!
After a colorful and delicious Ecuadorian lunch the National Geographic Islander repositioned to our next destination site, Puerto Egas on Santiago Island. Different activities were planned and all of them satisfied our desire for excitement. A group of “do-it-all-ers” enjoyed a second snorkeling outing and we all took a walk along the jagged shoreline of South James Bay. Galápagos sea lions and fur seals, marine iguanas and several species of shore birds were admired and photographed. We were stunned by the intrinsic beauty of the volcanic features of this wild coastline and its surroundings.
As the sun was setting, and the blue-footed boobies continued dropping from the sky trying for a last fish before dark, we came back to our “home away from home.”
