Santiago

This morning, as the sun peeked above the green slopes of the central island of Santiago or James, we disembarked with Aura and Fernando on a long dark sand beach at Espumilla and hiked first below mangroves and then into a beautiful mature palo santo forest. A lone dead hatchling sea turtle, that must have gotten lost, filled us with pity, but later we enjoyed identifying Darwin finches (large tree and woodpecker finches were new for us this week!), and getting a good close look at a golden, juvenile hawk. The view from a small hill back down to the ship was lovely and when we returned to the ship we deserved the bountiful breakfast that we consumed.

Meanwhile Jan took a group of kayakers, who practically sailed along the beach and then base of the steep cliffs at Buccaneer Cove, with a strong wind behind them that made the paddling easy...as long as you could stay upright. Those who opted for sleeping-in were grateful for the morning’s calm anchorage after a bit of “rock and roll” during the long night’s navigation.

Snorkeling, or a Zodiac ride, were the later morning options and most chose to snorkel. There were hundreds of sea jelly ribbons in the ocean with us; they were odd transparent creatures that we could see swimming slowly as we snorkeled among them. There were schools of colorful king angels and razor fish, and we spotted a large marbled stingray and a white-tipped reef shark, too. Bonito tuna, strong, fast predatory fish, darted in to feed on small schools of anchovies. The morning was sunny and warm, the water clear and cool, and we were exuberant with the experience! I took four guests on a Zodiac cruise driven by panguero Max, and we too had a marvelous outing.

Naturalist Jan gave a detailed and interesting presentation about Charles Darwin, and then we headed out to visit the island that Darwin had also spent time visiting. Darwin was only on land for 19 days during the five weeks that the HMS Beagle spent mapping in the Galápagos Islands; he camped for nine of these 19 days on Santiago, and this afternoon we practically followed in his footsteps.

The trail at Puerto Egas is a loop that circles inland and then along the rough, eroded lava coast. Inland the vegetation is drying out since the rains stopped a couple months ago. Along the shore we found fur seals hiding in shallow caves and sea turtles in flooded grottos. Two oyster catches were feeding in the intertidal zone and scores of slow moving, cold, marine iguanas were returning from an afternoon feeding on algae in the sea. Yellow warblers chased flies among the rocks, and ruddy turnstones and semi-palmated plovers, which are seasonal migrants here, poked for food in the tidal pools.

As the sun set some of us had a final thrill: we spied the fine mist of a whale spout in the distance against the red-orange glow of the fiery sun. We boarded the Zodiacs and returned contentedly to National Geographic Islander wondering what we could possibly see tomorrow that could continue to impress us….how about giant tortoises!?