Española Island
Today we explored the island of Española, one of the oldest islands in Galápagos, but also one with a big variety of sea birds.
We started our walk surrounded by very colorful many marine iguanas resting on the rocks and on the trail. Some people call them the Christmas iguanas. Firstly for the color, but also because in December, around Christmastime, the males begin to transform their body color, adding the color green. All along the back and the forelegs, the green highlights with red all over its body, this helps them call the attention of the females, but also is used to scare other males away from its territory.
The second part of our walk explored the interior part of Española Island, where we found different species of Darwin’s finches foraging in the area. Our young guests were busy looking for albatross. Finally we found some adults and young chicks getting ready for the long journey they will face next month to the coast of Chile, some one thousand kilometers away from here.
In the afternoon we had a variety of options close to the beach. Some of our guests decided to walk along the beach and enjoy watching the baby sea lions; others chose the glass bottom boat, and the most adventurous went deep water snorkeling off of Gardner Islet. It was fantastic! We saw a good number of turtles, rays and schools of fish here and there; it was perfect, the water visibility was phenomenal, and almost at the end of snorkeling I called to our guests to point out a giant school of golden rays! They were flying underwater like a flock of butterflies. It was a great underwater experience.
We all came back on board talking about the great day that we just had on Española Island.
