Day 18: Santiago (Puerto Egas), Bartolomé and Daphne Minor - Thursday February 8th 2018
Our morning visit today was to Puerto Egas (despite its name there is no 'port' here) on the western side of Santiago. The sandy beach, where we made a wet landing, had some scenic wind and wave-cut rock formations. From here there are two walking trails. One goes east through arid zone vegetation to Hawk Spring at the base of Pan de Azucar ("Sugerloaf"), a large volcanic tuff cone, and then on to a disused salt mine; the other goes south along coastal lava and sandy beach to what is billed as the best place in the islands to see Galapagos Fur Seals. We did the second of these trails. We didn't see anything new here, but we did have good views of several species of birds that inhabit the shore zone. These included an Oystercatcher that called noisily as it tried to block our path, a small flock of Least Sandpipers and 2 Yellow-crowned Night-herons. We did find 2 Galapagos Fur Seals - their abundance did not live up to the billing. |
After our walk some of us had our final snorkelling session of the tour. We found lots of fish, turtles, sea lions and a ray.
Returning to the Beluga, we cruised around the north of Santiago to reach the small island of Bartolomé - where we made our afternoon (dry) landing. This is a very popular tourist destination - we found 6 ships at anchor here. People come to climb the hill at the left of the image below - possibly the finest viewpoint in the islands. |
Below is a gallery of images from Bartolomé. Click on an image to enlarge and scroll through.
In the late afternoon we moved on towards North Seymour (where we are to make our final landing tomorrow). There were a good number of sea-birds on this route including large flocks of Red-necked Phalarope. On the way we passed the small islets of Daphne Major and Daphne Minor. We slowed to do a couple of circuits of Daphne Minor in a final attempt to see Galapagos Martin. I caught a short glimpse of 2 birds disappearing around a large rock that were the right size, shape and colour. I can't say that I made a positive identification, but given that this is the only likely swallow species, I can just about justify ticking it (but my conscience is not easy about it)
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