San Cristobal Island
Today was our last full day in the Galápagos archipelago, yet our visitor’s site was completely new—it was like walking on the surface of a different planet. Punta Pit is a giant tuff formation with a volcanic sandy beach full of small crystals of olivine; some of the species of animals observed at this site were new to all of our guests.
Hiking at Punta Pit showed us great views of the northern side of San Cristobal Island and a great diversity of species, including red-footed boobies, storm petrels, San Cristobal lava lizards, and Chatam mockingbirds.
After our morning’s activities we headed up to Kicker Rock, an eroded tuff cone situated off the northern coast of San Cristobal Island. The weather conditions were very good and allowed us to find some seabirds during the navigation such as shearwaters and Nazca boobies.
Kicker Rock, also known by local people as León Dormido, meaning “sleeping lion” in English, has many shapes when looked from many angles; it is a majestic piece of tuff nearly three hundred feet high with a channel in the middle which is a good scuba diving and snorkeling.
In the afternoon we organized deep water snorkeling to Kicker Rock. All our guests were so excited to be swimming in shark-infested waters; we lost count of the amount of sharks found, mainly Galápagos sharks were spotted also a couple of hammerhead sharks; they were bigger than us!
After such an adventure full of adrenaline, we came back on board and circumnavigated Kicker Tock looking for marine life; the sunset was one of the most spectacular we have had in the week.
