Sombrero Chino and Sullivan Bay, Santiago
This just might have been the best day of the week…but it is really very hard to decide because we have had such a fabulous trip! We began the morning with a pre-breakfast Zodiac ride along a lovely channel between Sombrero Chino and an impressive lava flow, dating from 1897, on Santiago Island. As we motored along, we were delighted to observe, not only pelicans, blue-footed boobies, striated herons, and marine iguanas, but also a flotilla of feeding penguins! We hadn’t even hoped or imagined to see so many penguins, because they have not been in this area much recently. But this morning we saw 16 of them! There were huge schools of fish—black-striped salema—breaking the water’s surface around our Zodiacs and these were the prey for all the birds we admired.
After breakfast and an hour to relax, most of us headed out in the Zodiacs to snorkel. Hands down this was our best snorkeling outing! We were amazed at the number and variety of things we saw: sharks, rays, zillions of bait fish, and other colorful fish of a dozen species, marine iguanas grazing on algae and penguins zipping after tiny fish. Relaxing on a small, gorgeous white beach, we were thrilled when a lone penguin zipped by, chasing tiny fish and practically swimming between our legs! A curious sea lion pup entertained us with his dives and swirls and playful rushes into shore. And later, from the upper sky deck of the National Geographic Islander, as the captain took us slowly along the shore of Bainbridge Rocks, we counted 25 brilliant pink flamingos in the flooded crater.
Our guests descended to lunch, but barely had time to heap their plates with delicious food, when I saw a pod of twenty dolphins feeding alongside the ship! I made an announcement and everyone hurried to the bow deck as the captain turned the National Geographic Islander towards the dolphins. They leapt beside us and some raced ahead to bow ride; we had a wonderful time looking down and admiring them as they sped ahead of the ship, moving effortlessly with powerful strokes of their tails.
After lunch we took a well-earned siesta, and in the late afternoon we boarded our fleet of Zodiacs for a ride to the lava fields at Sullivan Bay. We hiked across the hundred-year-old pahoehoe flow and photographed the unbelievably varied patterns and textures. The guides pointed out where trees had rapidly burnt up (tree forms) and hornitos where gas had burst forth, and on our cruise back to the ship we found a group of penguins out on the shore for the night.
During our evening recap, naturalist Jonathan showed us many plankton species using a stereomicroscope that he had previously collected with a fine net. Beau gave his video chronicle preview, showing only a few days’ worth of the amazing filming that he has done. What a marvelous experience we have had! But it is not over yet—tonight we will cross the Equator and tomorrow we visit “Bird Island.” The northern island of Genovesa is home to a half-million seabirds!
