| Galapagos 2025 part 7: Santiago: Salt Mines, Egas Port, Espumilla Beach, Buccanear Cove | |
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Slide show option — just for looking at the pictures. | |
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This would be our last full day in the Galapagos and our second at Santiago; this time on the northwest coast. The plan for the day was a wet landing, hike and beach snorkeling in the morning at James Bay. After lunch, deep water snorkeling followed by kayak or panga and sadly, our farewell dinner. Of course we were greeted by sea lions as we came up off the beach. More interesting volcanic rock, birds, sea lions, iguanas and beautiful views. The El Niño really did help us out, according to Jonathan — normally it would have been pretty rainy for the whole week. |
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The dew fall is clearly pretty impressive. We noticed that onboard: your clothes hanging on the railing might be dry by sunset, but would be heavy with dew in the morning. On this walk, in addition to sea lions, we saw hawks, night herons, iguanas (of course), crabs and beautiful tide pools. |
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| The wet suits that Nemo provided for snorkeling were from National Geographic; that just helped with the mindset about how astoundingly cool the snorkeling would be. This time we saw razor surgeonfish, chocolate chip sea stars, pyramid blue sea stars, rays, reef cornetfish and the illusive Sarah snorkeler :) |
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After snorkeling, the boat moved on to Buccanear Cove while the chef was working his magic. We enjoyed the view outside as we moved around Santiago and some impressive rock formations. |
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| It turns out we a fabulous farewell lunch; the chef came out to carve and serve the ham. (The briefing had mentioned farewell dinner, not farewell lunch.) While we were used to tasty, hot lunches, this was extra special. |
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With full tummies, we got back into the kayaks and panga for a close up view of Buccanear Cove. Jerry and I, in one of the kayaks, may have gotten a little closer view than Jonathan was expecting. We were very aware of the swell and size and force of the waves crashing into the rocks, and we stayed in our comfort zone. But afterwards, we heard there was some concern about our judgment. |
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One final deep water snorkel after the boating. This time was also kind of cloudy and no big critters. Still very nice to be in the water. And then the farewell dinner: a turkey and two roasted fish. Again, fantastic dining. |
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While there were stars out, there were also night gulls gliding along the boat. Obviously hard to get pictures of them at night. But very cool to have those shadows cruising alongside us and occasionally diving down to grab a snack from the ocean. Part 8: Sunday 1/19: Santa Cruz: Black Turtle Cove, Baltra. |
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