Santiago Island and Sea Turtles


Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Santiago Island

Today we began with a 6:00 AM pre-breakfast one-mile hike to Playa Espumilla on Santiago Island, a prime spot for sea turtle nesting.  It was truly amazing.

On the beach were Galapagos Oystercatchers:


 And mockingbirds:



But the major attraction was the female sea turtles. We came upon this one working her way to the sea, oh so slowly.  She’d take a couple of sand swim strokes and then stop and rest. Our naturalist said she’d be truly exhausted from her night of dragging herself up to the mangrove shelter above the high tide mark, digging a hole, laying the eggs, covering the hole and then dragging herself back to the edge of the surf.


We came upon this nest, built too close to the high-water mark:



And then we spotted this one, covering her nest.  We followed her progress all the way down the beach, a process which took about 30 minutes.  Here’s the abbreviated version (click on the mark at the center of the video):


We went back to the ship for breakfast, and then had the option of kayaking, paddle-boarding, deep water snorkeling or going out on a glass-bottom boat, which Joyce and I chose to do while the younger folks did more active things.  The glass-bottom boat gave a very good look at the marine life, not as good as snorkeling, but with the great advantage of a naturalist talking about what we were seeing the whole time.

All that before lunch!  After lunch one of the naturalists gave a truly thorough and comprehensives lecture on Charles Darwin.  He’s a native Spanish-speaker, his English is barely accented, but his speech pattern and speed reflect his first tongue.  That is to say, he spoke at least twice as many words per minute as I do when I give a talk.  He gave us more information in one hour than you can imagine!

After the talk came another shore excursion to a lovely beach, with the option of simply vegging and shore snorkeling or a long nature walk along the coast.  We all chose the beach which we shared with numerous sea lions who completely ignored us.





Tomorrow we go to the Charles Darwin Research Station and, with luck, will see many giant tortoises.

Comments

  1. Mark JacksonFebruary 25, 2019 at 11:56 AM

    Caption for your first photo above:

    "I dunno about this one Ralph - he's walking *toward* us. . . ."

    Hope you manage[d] to get home OK today.

    ReplyDelete
  2. LizFebruary 27, 2019 at 7:50 PM

    Wonderful video. But it was so hard to watch her working so hard. Didn't you just want to go over, pick her up and say, "Here, let me help you," and walk her down to the water?!!

    ReplyDelete

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