Eden Boat Tour Day 2 - Santiago and Bartolome

Charles Darwin's Loo according to our guide..
see all photos »

We awoke to the sound of a large male sea lion ‘barking’ at his harem and after breakfast our guide George took us for a walk in James Bay. Along the way we saw many marine iguanas, sea lions and sally light foot crabs. The bay had grottos which were rock formations where the water surged up from the sea and inside we saw turtles and sea lions swimming.

We went snorkeling before lunch and saw diamond sting rays, a white tip reef shark, turtles, penguins!, barracudas, king angel fish, bumphead parrot fish, pacific leopard flounders and gold spot sheepheads (to name but a few!).

Alex had a close encounter with a penguin

The Elephant Rock (can you see it?!)
see all photos »

On a boat ride past buccaneer cove we saw huge manta rays breaching (doing somersaults) out of the water and some strange rock formations, one looked like an elephant and the other was called the praying monk.

In the afternoon we arrived at Bartolome which is a very barren island. Most of the islands in Galapagos are 2-3 million years old but this one is only about 1 million years old so is considered young?!

Bartolome is famous for the Pinnacle which is a giant rock formation that is used on many of the post cards etc.. for Galapagos. We snorkeled round this area and saw much more of the same marine life we had seen earlier in the day and  who slapped him on the arm for getting too close to his fish supper!

P-p-p-pick up a penguin
see all photos »

Our last hike of the day took us up to the top of the island where we took in views of parasitic craters and the sunset with an aerial view of the pinnacle – all in all a truly amazing day which anyone would be hard pushed to beat!

The boat journey that night was another rough one which took us north, across the equator, to Genovesa. The ride was made somewhat smoother by the fact that the night sky was completely clear and so, with the aid of a star chart, we could see all of the northern hemisphere stars at the front of the boat and all the southern constellations at the rear