Espanola Island
Today we visited the oldest of the Galapágos Islands known as Hood Island, or Espanola. After a pre-breakfast kayak, we geared up to go snorkeling along the coastline of Gardner Islet, where we found several species of tropical fish and some Galapágos sea lions playing in the water. A nice white coralline sand beach was waiting for us at Gardner Bay. This place holds one of the largest colonies of sea lions in the Galapágos. There were more than 100 sea lions resting along the shoreline.
After lunch we navigated towards Suarez Point. As soon as we dropped anchor, we had a dry landing to explore the wonderful endemic wildlife on this islands. Many of the species we saw were only found on this island. Being the oldest of the enchanted islands, the species here had longer evolutionary time to adjust to this microhabitat. We spotted many sea lions colonies, Nazca boobies, blue-footed boobies, Hood lava lizards, brown pelicans, Sally Lightfoot crabs and a breathtaking landscape with a blow hole on the coast line.
After a beautiful sunset we returned to the National Geographic Islander to explore the rest of Darwin’s land.
