3rd - Galapagos

Lunch

We started the morning with breakfast at 0700, and at 0745 we did a wet landing at a place call Chinese Hat on Isla Santiago. The name comes from a small hill top that has a shape of a Chinese hat and in Spanish it’s called Sombrero Chino. Here we saw sea lions (in the water and also circling the zodiac and a couple sunbathing on land), marine iguanas, and lava lizards.

Coming back to the boat we did deep water snorkeling. Wearing wetsuits we took the zodiacs out from the boat and jumped in from there. The depth was app- 5-10 meters. Here we saw several different colorful fish, a couple of white-tipped sharks and one large sting ray.

When coming back to the boat around 1100 we sailed on to Isla Bartolomé. Here we had lunch, and at 1430 we will be doing shallow water snorkeling (from the coast, as yesterday).

Marine iguana

Lava lizard

Sea lions playing

Sunbathing but still keeping an eye on us...

Evening

After lunch we went on a shallow water snorkeling. The visibility wasn’t bad at all, and it was easy to see the many fish swimming around. They were surprisingly un-afraid as they hardly reacted when we came swimming, despite being within reaching distance. We got to see a couple of Galapagos penguins sitting on the rocks. Mike, my friendly American roommate (cabinmate?) saw a shark. The shark came pretty close, apparently; circled a few times and hit his flippers, which made him decide it was time to get out of the water and into a zodiac. A few others saw the shark too, and they quickly swam in the opposite direction. It isn’t clear what shark it was; it wasn’t a white-tipped shark but apart from that nobody was quite sure what it was. But Mike didn’t feel it necessary to stay around and find out.

Getting back we soon after went for a walk on Bartolomé. The island is – like all of Galapagos – created by lava and previous eruptions (last eruption was back in 2008) which gives it all a moon-like look. Bartolomé had a redness which made it look more like Mars. On our way back in the zodiacs we went past some of the cliffs we were at while snorkeling so we got some shots off of the penguins. Sitting with a long-range zoom lens it is really hard to get a steady shot when sitting in a small boat…

The boat has just stopped and cast anchor which means that we have arrived at Puerto Egas (on the other side of Isla Santiago from Bartolomé) where the first part of tomorrow is going to take place. A walk followed by shallow water snorkeling will be taking the time until lunch, after which we will be going to Isla Rabida where another walk will be followed by another snorkel.

Panorama of Bartolomé

A galapagos penguin in all its might. 1 foot tall.