Lava Life

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Awoke to find boat already at anchor, in a beautiful bay on the east coast of Bartolome. This area is mainly lava fields and displayed many different geological features of volcanic eruptions over different episodes of eruption. After breakfast we took the Pange again to land at some steps cut into the lava rock and ascended to the top of the lava hill, observing the many volcanic spouts and formations around us. There was little fauna here on the barren landscape, but we did see Pelican, Lizards, iguanas and Sally Lightfoot crabs (which were virtually everywhere), lighting up the rocks with their brilliant red colours. Before lunch we snorkelled along the rocky cliff side and saw many white tip reef shark, starfish, sea cucumber, and thousands of highly coloured fish. The coral here tended to be grey or white, possibly the result of climate change ? Our CEO, Adrianna (32), is a local girl, full of energy, enthusiasm, and humour, in addition to her wealth of local knowledge. She is probably one of the best CEOs we have had on our 7 GAdventures trips so far. After lunch we set sailed to Sulivan bay on Santiago Island, to visit and walk over a massive lava field with fantastic patterns and fissures caused by several lava spills. Here in the Galapagos, they don't tend to have the typical eruptions and explosions, but usually a more gentle and persistent lava spillage, creating fantastic natural art over the landscape. Following this trek, we cooled of with more snorkelling off a secluded white coral sand beach. Here we saw many more exotic highly coloured fish, and a sea snake. After another superb dinner, it was another early night following the captains warning that we were in for a stormy night en route further south to Isabella Island, the biggest of the Galapagos archipelago. Here, the warmer Humbolt current from the south east, meets the cooler Cromwell current from the west, creating many storms. Oh joy! Nail everything to the floor and tie ourselves in. Lovely clear skies and a full moon, but already too windy to stand on upper observation deck to stargaze. Slainte !

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