Sombrero Chino and Santiago Islands
Santiago Island is special due to its colorful landscapes, its vicinity to the largest islands, its greenish highlands, and incredibly its lack of inhabitants. This was the most visited island by Charles Darwin who dedicated some lines of his books to describing its land iguanas, a reptile that became extinct later. Just beside Santiago, the small island of Sombrero Chino looked barren without great vegetation but with a shape that caught the attention of our guests.
After breakfast we started our first outing with a beautiful Zodiac ride along Sombrero Chino, encountering with many Galápagos penguin on the rocks and swimming close to the sea shore of Santiago. We had great weather, clear skies and good visibility in the sea which looked turquoise – perfect for snorkeling; and certainly it was great, because we observed white and black tipped reef sharks, sting rays, sea lions, marine iguanas and many tropical fish.
After lunch we headed north towards Sullivan Bay at Santiago Island. The navigation gave us the chance to see great geological formations such as young lava flows and tuff cones islets. We circumnavigated along one of which had many flamingos standing in a saltwater lagoon inside the crater. Once we dropped anchor, we could appreciate the real magnitude of the eruption occurred in 1897. Black branches of lava surrounded brownish cinder cones, forming a spectacular multicolor landscape. Of course, we landed on that black lava flow where we discovered its different textures, lava tubes beneath and pioneer vegetation. When we arrived to the old lava flow, it looked perfectly similar to a Martian or lunarscape.
We returned to National Geographic Islander, and from the sundeck we enjoyed an incredible sunset. After dinner we observed a starry sky without clouds, perfect to enjoy an incredible stargazing; it was the last gift this incredible day offered us in this adventure called Galápagos.
