Thursday May 30th
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.
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