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Published: April 30th 2011
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Day 11. March 18, 2011: Santiago and Bartolome
Bartolome We woke up @ 6 AM in order to get in the pangas to go on a Penguin hunt. You can tell from the picture that we look a little haggard at this point (Anne to Steve: I think I look great!)
The Galapagos Penguin is endemic and is the only species of Penguin that lives in the northern hemisphere. We stayed close to shore and wound up seeing a couple of them in the water and then another one on the shore in the rocks. Williams told us that the turtles would be coming during the night to lay eggs and would be back in the water when we did our panga tour.
Steve saw sand flying on one of the beaches. It turned out to be a turtle still on the beach covering up her eggs. She was late a few hours and risked having predators see her and what she was doing.
We then went back to the Voyager for breakfast.
Santiago After breakfast, we went for a shore excursion on Santiago. This was pretty wild because the trail was over a lava
flow. The lava flow we were on was only about 100 years old. So it had almost no trees, cactus or anything like that. It was an odd assortment of lava, desert looking areas and lush tropics in the background. The lava flow is called pahoehoe which is smooth and ribbon like. The rest of the area was about 500 million years old.
Snorkeling with Penguins We put on our snorkeling gear and got into the water in Sullivan Bay. Since we had already seen Penguins, we weren't thinking we were going to see more of them (Anne to Steve: are you crazy??? Of course we are going to see more penguins while we are snorkeling!)
They were some small schools of fish that were near us. At one point, we looked around and a Penguin whooshed by us. It was hunting the little fish. It would fly by us one way, turn around, surface to catch a breath and then zoom around chasing fish. This went on for a good ten minutes and then another one joined in on the fun. They are so fast under water its unbelievable. They were also within what seemed like inches
of us. They were probably a few feet away.
We headed back to shore and then went back to the boat for lunch.
Bartolome After lunch we went around Bartolome to a rocky landing area. We landed and then we hiked to the summit of Pinnacle Rock Overlook. There were a couple of stops on the way up to give us a break during the hike. What a fantastic view of Pinnacle Rock, Bartolome, and Santiago. The view was amazing!
We also took a nice group photograph courtesy of James, our resident British Royal Air Force helicopter pilot (the one kneeling). This was Steve's favorite day.
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