Buccaneer's Cove

Thursday May 30th afternoon

 

After our morning walk and snorkel we returned to the ship for lunch. Meanwhile the crew raised anchor and motored along the very impressive cliffs to Buccaneers Cove.

 

 

While some rested, Jenny and Holly took out the kayaks. When they returned, Drew kayaked and the panga took the rest of us around to the spectacular monk and elephant cliffs, where we jumped in for 'deep water snorkelling'.

In addition to some orange sun seastars and king butterfly fish, I saw lots of the yellow tailed razor surgeon fish feeding on the algae on the rocks. One white tipped shark swam past and another was hiding in a cave near a marbled ray.

Swimming around the point brought us into choppy seas that were quite a challenge, even for Drew in the kayak.

 

 

 

The Nemo motored slowly back along the cliffs.  Many layers of lava were exposed in the cliff face, and lots of seabirds were nesting on the ledges and niches eroded between the layers.

Sections of the cliffs were very red or pale tan in contrast to the usual black. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The three northern volcanos on Isabela were on the horizon with Fernandina rising in the saddle between two.

 

As we were watching the sun set, a few manta rays broke the surface. The crew even set the outer jib for the final leg to tiny Isla Rabida on the southern side of Santiago, where we dropped anchor at 1915 hr.

 

 

Diego gave his usual briefing on tomorrow's activities before a later dinner. 

 This is an example of our schedule that Diego planned for us everyday  -  for tomorrow on Isla Rabida.

Underwater aquaria

Thursday May 30^th

The day started with the usual cup of tea on deck to check out the anchorage off  Isla Santiago(set at 2am) before our 7am breakfast.

 

For our first activity at 7:45 we headed off in the panga for a wet landing on the black sand beach of Egas Cove (site of the ruined house of a salt maker). We put on our hiking boots and headed past a lazy sea lion up the cliff, across to the black lava rock platform. There were lots of hermit crab tracks in the sand, much more prominent than the tracks made by the little lava lizards.

 

The black rocks on the seashore were very interesting shapes, reminiscent of Broulee rock platform. 

 

 

 

The lava tubes created some beautiful deep aquaria with bridges and blowholes;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

one was nick-named Darwin’s toilet because of its obvious flush.

Galápagos fur seals (really another species of sea lion, since they also had little earlobes) were basking on the rocks near one deep aquarium, and several delighted us with their aquatic acrobatics.



 

Green turtles were also enjoying the aquaria.

 

Yellow warblers, great herons and pied oystercatchers were frequent on the rocks.

 

 






 The iguanas on Santiago are more reddish because they feed on red algae.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After walking back to the cove, we changed into our gear for our shallow water snorkel off the beach.

 

 

Drew swam out following a swimming iguana and later saw a sea lion swimming and a ray on the sandy bottom. 

 

 

Jane headed out past the pelicans on the rocks and found an underwater gulch, presumably and old lava tunnel which still had some bridges, with lots of varieties of parrot fish and wrasse. A white tipped shark swam past and later was resting on the sand on the bottom of the gulch. Lava gulls were on the rocks above.