Santiago Island
Our expedition around this enchanted archipelago is at its peak, we have been several days already around many islands each one with its own charm. After navigating the whole night we started the day off with an early walk on Espumilla Beach. This paradisiacal location has many attractions: a wonderful long sea turtle nesting beach, a mangrove forest, a shallow lagoon and a fabulous view from up the little hill that crowns the trail filled with huge mature “Palo santo” trees all with the company of a marvellous choir of Darwin finches. It has been raining hard in the last days therefore a green mantle is very notorious already.
Just during breakfast and upon the arrival of the walkers the National Geographic Islander was repositioned to Buccaneer Cove. This historical place was once a favorite location for pirates and privateers where they could find serene anchorages and copious provisions in the form of freshwater, firewood, and unfortunately plenty of tortoise meat.
Snorkeling in Buccaneer Cove is excellent; today there were many colorful tropical fish, reef sharks, and some Galápagos fur seals. There were a lot of salps in the water as well. The latter invertebrates appear similar to jellies because of the simple body form and planktonic behavior; they are structurally most closely related to vertebrates. Salps appear to have a form preliminary to vertebrates, and are used as a starting point in models of how vertebrates evolved. Scientists speculate that the tiny groups of nerves in salps are one of the first instances of a primitive nervous system, which eventually evolved into the more complex central nervous systems of vertebrates. After this successful snorkeling outing we had a couple of options to choose from: kayaking or a Zodiac ride. The riders and kayakers explored the rocky coast and had a blast under the impressive tuff cliffs and into the shallow caves of the area.
After lunch I had the joy of giving one of my favorite presentations: “Charles Darwin, a Retrospective of his Extraordinary Life.” Immediately after I finished at around 1530 we disembarked, with the aid of our Zodiac fleet, at Puerto Egas to go for a long walk along the coastline. The walk follows an extraordinary path nearby the ocean that is full of lava shores. Shore birds, many marine iguanas and Galápagos fur seals were highlights among the amazing amount and diversity of wildlife to see. As the day was coming to an end we returned to the ship with the company of a soft drizzle rain that was intermittent during the whole afternoon. We can hardly wait to see what new adventures our expedition will bring tomorrow to our lives.
