The Galapagos-Santiago and Bartholomew Islands

After viewing so much wildlife, we took a break to visit Santiago Island to admire the change in scenery. The island surface is made up of lava rock predominantly of the pahoehoe type, which is flat and easy to walk on. The surface contains either circular imprints of the lava or straight flowing. The other type, the a'a', is named as such because it hurts to walk on the rough and spiky lava rock and one might yell "aye aye" when walking on top. At least that's what my guide told me. The rock is made of smaller rocks bunched up to form jagged spikes. Both types are found on the ground and throughout the island one can see where the lava flow stopped and met the earth. I only walked on the pahoehoe and tried to blend in with the lava rock like the marine iguanas, but my sarong gave me away.



After our hike around, we snorkeled around the island and I ran into four Galapagos penguins swimming about. Galapagos penguins are the only penguins to exist in both the Northern and Southern hemisphere. Random trivia. They are the smallest type of penguins too. On land they seem rather clumsy, but in the water, they expertly dove and swam about. When not swimming, they sit on top of the water like ducks. I actually thought they were ducks. Although hard to tell from this photo, the penguins are on the water right in front of me.

In the afternoon, we sailed to Bartholomew island best known for it's pointed Pinnacle Rock that makes for a lovely photo opp at the top of the island.


We snorkeled at this location as well which has the a small group of about 14 penguins that live around the rock. For better pictures, we took the panga boat over there. I pointed the boat in the right direction and off we motored. We watched the sea gull scold two penguins for getting in her way while the other penguins played around and dried off on the rocks.