Our Galapagos expedition this week has managed to take us from the most western to most eastern island in the enchanted archipelago, allowing us to have a complete overview of the pristine nature’s essence, from the youngest to the oldest ecosystems that have followed in succession since their establishment.
Today, the National Geographic Endeavour dropped anchor off the coast of San Cristobal Island, embracing the amazing view of the titan cliffs of our visitor site known as Pitt’s Point. This is where the prevalent south eastern trade winds first hit the archipelago, bringing some of the light rain as the season changes. We started our excursion with a wet landing on a green sandy beach, full of tiny olivine crystals, refracting the sun light and shining to the eyes of viewers. Our trail took us to an old downhill stream bed, eroded by the rain water following the point of gravity from the high peaks of this place. The breath-taking geological features, including the eroded tuff cones and a few volcanic “bombs” incrusted into the walls, create quite a remarkable mix of textures, including lines and ripples of brown volcanic ash.
Although the geology caught our eyes as soon as we landed on this visitor site, we came here to find the red-footed boobies that inhabit the cliffs of Pitt’s Point. The highlight of the morning for most of us was our encounter with quite a few nests of the red-footed boobies, not only up high on the cliffs, but also right along our path, allowing us to photograph the adults with their chicks.
During the afternoon we repositioned to “Kicker Rock”, an incredible eroded volcanic cone standing out of the Pacific Ocean. Here we conducted our snorkeling activities during the afternoon and with luck, we managed to spot several groups of sharks of all sort, including black tips, white tips reef sharks and Galapagos sharks. A couple of hammer head sharks and eagle rays were also spotted. Once we were all back on board, we circumnavigated Kicker Rock, in order to take photographs of what had become our all-natural aquarium for the afternoon. We could not have chosen better place to enjoy the sunset.
