The National Geographic Islander continues its voyage around the Galapagos Islands, and now is the time to visit Santiago Island.
During the morning we stopped at a place called Chinese Hat. This is an ancient cinder cone which is the last eruption of the Bainbridge rocks. The islet is located next to a lava flow that came out of the volcano recently, so there is a nice turquoise shallow bay. Here we used our Zodiacs early in the morning and explored the coast with the aim to find Galapagos penguins, which we did! Their population is quite tiny in the Galapagos and we only saw a few. Later we came back to the boat and went to the same place we visited previously, only this time to snorkel. Chinese hat is one of the best snorkeling places in the archipelago and today was no exception. Plenty of colorful tropical fish were spotted here and we also saw white tipped sharks! After a quiet and beautiful morning we moved to one of the islets next to Chinese hat, called Bainbridge, to see some more flamingos.
Finally our last destination in the afternoon was Sullivan Bay. There was an eruption in the 1890’s here on the eastern part of Santiago that brought out all of this lava that looks very fresh. Eventually a few plants have re-established themselves here, such as the lava cacti. When we explored this lava flow it seemed unlikely that any flora would survive in the middle of nowhere. More cinder cones, spatter cones, lava tunnels and little ovens were seen when we hiked on Sullivan bay.
Today was a good opportunity to see how the islands were formed and see how life eventually returned.
