Wednesday, March 9: Santiago and Bartolome Islands

The main feature of Santiago Island is the relatively recent (about 100 years ago) lava flow that covers much of the island.  Our first activity for the day was a long walk on the island, mostly across the lave flows.  As with most activities, we started with a tender ride, this time passing by one of the other Celebrity ships in the Galapagos

   The Celebrity Expedition accommodates about 48 passengers.

We rode past the Expedition toward the shoreline (no real beach) and scrambled up onto the very black lava.

Other tenders were coming behind us.

The landscape was like something out of a Sci-Fi movie: just lots of black lava in many different designs and shapes.

You could imagine this lava flowing then solidifying in place.

More Lava flows: note the pointed rock in the background.

While we were standing around, getting organized, we noticed a couple of Penguins swimming by, toward some rocks, where they then jumped up, almost as if to show off to us.

They are hard to see, but there were actually two Penguins.

Our naturalist guide took us for a walk, looking at the rather meager vegetation that had managed to get a foothold in the 100 years since the lava was flowing.

These small plants had managed to get a foothold.

There were some stringy looking plants that were hanging onto the lava and also some “Lava Cactus” plants that we saw in several places.  I think Cactus can live almost anywhere.

A small Lava Cactus seemed to like where it was.

After a little walk, we got to an area where the newer lava had flowed over some older lava fields that were about 1000 years old.

 New and slightly older lava fields.  Black is the new lava.

Some hearty vegetation had managed to get a start in the older lava fields, but it was still a very unfriendly environment.

 Some of the sparse vegetation

There were also areas of even older lava flows, thought to be around 10,000 years old.

 Black = 100 years old, brown = 1000 years, gray = 10,000 years

This video of the lava flows may give you a better feeling for how desolate the area seemed.

We explored the area for about two hours, learning about the various flows, checking out a rare “mini-vent”, and finding the only animals on the land, a couple of very dry looking locusts.  On the other hand, the waters around the island were thriving with various animals.

After our walk, we loaded back into the tender and went back to the Flora for a short rest and lunch.  Shortly after lunch, we noticed some activity around the stern of the ship so we went to investigate.  The subject of attention was a large Sea Lion who decided that a padded storage box on a tender made a good place to take a nap.

  Seal Lion laying claim to one of the tenders

It was about time to start loading the tenders, so the crew tried various ways to “encourage” the Sea Lion to get off the tender, but he was in no hurry.  When he was finally convinced to leave, he quickly headed to another tender and started to climb aboard that one, but the crew quickly discouraged that.

The first activity for the afternoon was a snorkel along the shoreline close to where that strange rock (“Pinnacle Rock”) is located. 

 There is that Pinnacle Rock again, from water level.

The good news is that, by this time, I realized that I had a problem with my waterproof camera and managed to reinitialize it to a working mode before the snorkel was over.  The main attraction for this snorkel was the possibility of finding some penguins, and find them we did.  I found a couple of penguins in the water and followed one for a while.  Toward the end of this video of the penguin, it indicates what it thought of me following it around. A couple of the penguins then climbed up on a rock and put on a bit of a show for me.  We climbed back into the tender and soon headed back to the Flora for a short rest.

The second activity for the afternoon was a climb to the highest peak on Bartolome Island for a good view of the general area and especially Pinnacle Rock.

 Look close and you can see the people starting the hike to the peak.

We were told that there were 374 steps to get to the top, but no one mentioned the long stretches of an uphill boardwalk.

 These people had not even gotten to the steps yet.

 It really was not a bad climb: the Naturalist guides would stop their group fairly often to talk about the local environment and history, so we did not get very tired.

 The view from the top, including Pinnacle Rock again.

We spent some time at the top, looking around and getting photos.  The light was not good for really good photos of the area, but at least we could prove that we had been there.

 Yes, we really did go to the Galapagos Islands.

The trip back down was physically easier, but still a bit tricky with several loose or rotten boards. 

 Starting back down

As usual, we attended the presentation of the next day’s activities and options, had a nice dinner, and relaxed in the lounge for a while before calling it a night. 

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