After navigating all night long we arrived early today at our destination: Santiago Island. We also started early with a morning excursion to Espumilla Beach. This location was visited by pirates and later, by whalers. As there was a small creek here to get some fresh water, it also was a good spot to get giant tortoises. This morning we had a great walk; here we encountered Galapagos hawks that were very curious and landed less than three feet away from us.
Along the coast there were several nests of Pacific green sea turtles, and we also saw a pair of American oyster catchers as well as brown pelicans.
After our morning walk we returned aboard for breakfast and later repositioned to Buccaneer’s Cove. There we went snorkeling, kayaking, and had several rides on our glass bottom boat available for our guests.
As the morning ended we navigated towards Puerto Egas; there we went snorkeling off the beach and encountered a great variety of different species of fish as well as marine invertebrates. One of the most exciting moments was discovering a white-tipped reef shark trapped in a tidal pool; the shark was peacefully swimming until a playful juvenile Galapagos sea lion began to nip the shark’s tail for more than an hour. At some point the sea lion got bored and left the shark to peacefully swim again; with the next high tide the shark will get free from that small pool.
As we finished swimming and snorkeling then we went on a walk on Puerto Egas; there we saw the remains of a small salt mine company that operated in Galapagos at the beginning of the sixties as well as Galapagos marine iguanas, sea lions, and fur seals.
What a great day in Galapagos.
