Frontiers Note: Henrietta Strutt is from the Frontiers UK office. She shares her spectacular experience during a recent trip to the Galápagos Islands. This is part five in the series.
Today we were spending the whole day visiting Santiago which is the fourth largest of the Galápagos islands.
It was an early start again before breakfast. Another beautiful morning in the Galápagos. There was a choice of either a hike inland (which I did) or a hike close to the beach focused on photography (that Lara did). It was a wet landing and then the groups went off with their naturalist. I was with Gaby again and Lara was with Celso. As we went inland we encountered mosquitoes for the first time. My spray, which had remained unused up until now, was welcomed by many in the group.
For the older people in our group it was helpful to have a hiking stick (which are available on the ship) with them as some of the terrain was uneven and you were either going up or down a steep hill. It was very green and different to most of the other islands. We saw a couple of Galápagos hawks in a tree surveying the view down the valley.
The beach is one of the archipelago’s most important marine turtle nesting areas so wandering down the beach unaccompanied is not allowed. Lara was lucky enough to see a female turtle who had just finished laying her eggs. She was exhausted and then slowly made her way back down the beach towards the sea.
As we made our way on our inland hike the scenery changed and we entered a mass of intertwined mangrove trees. It was dark and you had to bend down low in places and climb over branches. I felt like I had entered a fairy tale and this was where the evil witch would live but, it was also magical.
We went back to the boat for another delicious breakfast and then the rest of the morning was a choice of deep water snorkelling, paddle boarding or kayaking. Lara went kayaking with one of the naturalist guides and had five hammerhead sharks circling their kayak.
After Lara returned from kayaking, we both went snorkelling but with different naturalists. We were snorkelling in Buccaneer Cove, a one time pirate haunt, as well as the location where Charles Darwin landed for his longest stint on land in the Galápagos. The water was quite rough and you definitely needed your buddy to keep an eye out. Again, we saw a huge array of marine life in these fertile waters.
A buffet lunch was served at 12:30 p.m. The food throughout the week was top class. With all the outings and activities you need to keep your energy up (well that was my excuse for eating as much as I did!). During lunch we sailed a short distance to anchor at Puerto Egas.
We had a little down time before disembarking to the beach for swimming and or snorkelling. There were some amazing rock formations at one end of the beach where there were seals lounging around among the rock pools. As I was having a chat with a fellow guest I looked round and right behind us was a baby sea lion and his mother. With no hesitation, he came straight up to me and started sniffing my leg. What a special experience this was. I was a little nervous of the quite large mother who was just behind us but she seemed perfectly relaxed and actually left her baby with us and went off to join the other adults on the rocks. The little one was very curious and very interested in us. I managed to take some video of him on my telephone which I then showed to Jason, the naturalist. You are supposed to stay at least six feet away from the animals so I was worried that I might get told off but if the animals come up to you that is ok. He loved my video of the little one. So did my fellow guest who were a little jealous of my experience. Something I will never forget.
After a quick dip in the sea, Zodiacs brought guests who had stayed on the ship over to the beach for a lovely walk of 1.5 miles leading to an indented shoreline. We saw marine iguanas, Darwin finches, tiny sleeping sea lions who had been left alone while their mothers were out to sea feeding. One baby was with its mother and Jason thought it was only two or three weeks old. We also saw fur seals in dramatic, deeply carved sea-level grottos.
It was time to head back to the ship after another amazing day of scenery, underwater and land wildlife. We are midway through our trip and have seen and learned a huge amount but with two more full days left there is obviously much more in store for us.
Some photos courtesy of Lindblad Expeditions.