Santiago Island, Puerto Egas and Espumilla beach

We arrived at Santiago Island and our guide told us we would have an easy day today , yeah right off to a hike but I guess easy is because it did not have any elevation! Off we went to explore once more through a rugged coast line filled with lava flows from past eruptions. On Punta Egas we encounter more sea lions and baby sea lions on land just lounging in their beautiful scenery. This area had a very rugged coast line and here is where we had the opportunity to see the Fur Seal as they made their home on the geological  grotto formations as their dens which was a great choice since there seems to be lots of fish waiting to be dinner as an easy catch in a beautiful tidal pools below them plus during the day they hide from the hot equatorial sun . Fur seals were once hunted to near extinction for their coats. The Galapagos Fur Seal is the smallest of the fur seals found in the southern hemisphere, now compare in numbers with the sea lions. At night they feed on squid and fish avoiding the sharks, which are their natural predator.
Fur Seal

Fur Seal

Sea Lion
marine iguana that looks like the creature from the black lagoon


a trio of marine iguanas
This little guy was such a poser he was the cutes  sea lion I have ever seen

Galapagos Heron

In the afternoon we had a wet landing at Espumilla beach, this beach has a coffee colored sand with a ting of red, this was a great beach for a long stroll and that is exactly what we did. Along the beach was a a long stretch of mangroves that literally had a sea turtle  trails every 10 steps, sea turtles love to nest here, if I was a turtle I would nest there to, a remote ,quite and peaceful location. There were hundreds of sally light foot crabs , common stilts  and blue footed boobies diving.

turtle trails

beach walk

just nothing around but beauty!

Shortly after our walk we hopped back on our dingy and a few of us decided to take full advantage of the area and we put our wetsuits on and went for a snorkel to see what we would find here. Just for FYI the way it worked was that in some areas our guide and boat had not been there for a long time and they just looked around where they thought it would be a great place to snorkel and they would say “ok this looks good jump in” WHAT!Believe it or not I would never so this in my own area but for some reason when ii travel I get more adventurous.   To the water we go, in the area we snorkeled was very deep but it was clear, if you would look down you would see hundreds of tropicals everywhere , this area to me had the most tropical I had seen compared to the other areas we had snorkeled, and guess who finally showed up and came right up to Mike and I to say hello was the Galapagos Reef Shark he took a look at us and swan right underneath us, we could have just pet this guy he was so close to us, he looked serious and glad he just scooted off.


Our trip on the catamaran is starting to come to and end, tomorrow is the last day and I was getting sad but coming up next is Genovesa,the only place in the world that you can see red footed boobies and the short eared owls that have diurnal habits…….more to come on this subject on the next blog post!! Stay tuned!