Punta Pitt & Cerro Brujo, San Cristobal Island, 1/27/2018, National Geographic Islander

To end our week in the Galapagos Islands we visited another beautiful destination, San Cristobal, also known as Chatam. This is the first island upon which Darwin landed back in 1835 and one of the oldest islands of the archipelago. That's why the landscape is so different from what we have been observing. This island offers a visitor’s site called Punta Pitt where we landed on an olivine sparkly beach. We changed into hiking shoes and the first thing we saw were some animals that, by now, we are used to…a colony of sea lions. The hike began through some spiny bushes and went up between the eroded rocks where we encountered lava lizards endemic to this particular island. It is astonishing to walk in this canyon and on the way up we even needed our hands to hold on. When we reached the top we encountered blue-footed and red-footed boobies nesting and even had the chance to see some eggs in the nests! Returning to the beach gave us our last chance for snorkeling and paddle boarding.

We went back on board and the National Geographic Islander sailed to our spot for the afternoon. Meanwhile there was time to edit our pictures before handing them over to our photo instructor and naturalist, Christian Saa. Together we made a wonderful slideshow with our pictures to take back home as a souvenir of our memories.

Cerro Brujo is our last outing, and it´s finally the time for a white sandy beach for a relaxing excursion. We wandered around the intertidal pools and saw different species of shorebirds, like the oystercatchers, ruddy turnstones, sanderlings, and more. Certainly it was time to breathe in the marine breeze and take in all the beauty of the trip and Galapagos mysteries as we enjoyed the sunset.

This has been a great week on board the National Geographic Islander. The western part of the archipelago shined with all the marine life, the center gave us a look into culture, science, and reptiles, and in the end the east amazed us with a wonderful sunset. On board we had a farewell cocktail and dinner with people that by now were good friends.