Urbina Bay, our first stop this morning, is a place of great geological interest for a fantastic event took place there in the early 50’s. An earthquake of 6.5 on the Richter scale occurred on June 4th, 1954 provoking a huge area adjacent to the coastline to uplift, leaving many marine creatures high and dry. It is still possible to see the relics of this event, huge pieces of brain coral scattered inland!

In this area there is a hale and hearty population of Galapagos land iguanas and we saw many of them along the trails. Many native and endemic flowers were found everywhere including the beautiful Galapagos cotton flower.  At the end of the walks we had the chance to cool off at the black lava landing beach.

A juvenile Galapagos hawk was around the area providing amazing opportunities for photography. Its ecological naiveté was remarkable. This bird of prey did not show any kind of concern to us humans who were around it.

Once everyone was back onboard, the ship was repositioned to the south to Tagus Cove where we will spend the afternoon. After lunch we had an early kayaking outing followed by snorkeling. We put on our gear to explore the underwater world by doing deep-water snorkeling in an exotic location, which today was optimal for the waters were not as cool as expected. Visibility was not bad at all and we were fortunate to have great sightings. Sea turtles, Galapagos sea lions and even a couple of penguins were seen.

In the late afternoon we disembarked at Tagus Cove for an invigorating, fast-paced hike along the rim of a volcanic tuff cone. We saw an inner lake, aptly named Darwin in honor of the great naturalist who was around this area when he visited the Galapagos back in 1835. After ascending to the lookout point, we had a beautiful view that was described by some of our guests as, “Spectacular and dreamlike”.

Some guests opted to go for a second round of kayaking instead of the walk. This latter outing was very successful, for our kayakers had the chance to cover a long distance admiring the striking volcanic landscape and looking for wildlife. Many blue footed boobies, Brown pelicans, Galapagos sea lions and penguins were seen along the coastline.

As the day was coming to an end we returned to the ship with the satisfaction of having spent a wonderful day in this paradise.