Accommodations: Samba

Our sixth day in the Galapagos was one of heightened anticipation and excitement. When traveling here, you become almost intimately familiar with the native animals and every day is one of adventure as you never fully know what you’ll see next…more to come on that.

The island of Santiago is home to a rock formation known as Chinese Hat. One of the newer islands we’ve seen, a square capped mini mountain rises from the middle of the island which boasts an almost lifeless landscape of lava fields, only dotted with roaming crabs and a spotting of foliage.

The almost barren landscape of Chinese Hat was just a lead up to that of Bartolome Island, where we headed next. A stone spire welcomes us as we made our way towards the white shore of the island. As luck would have it, our eagle eyed guide was on the lookout for a creature we’ve been trying to spot since we got down to the islands…

The Galapagos Penguin is the only tropical penguin in the world. They stand a little under two feet tall and only weigh about six pounds. We were extraordinarily fortunate to catch the entire colony as we were coming into Bartolome. These little guys are a far cry away from their antarctic cousins and live in the Galapagos thanks to a cool current that runs throughout the archipelago.

If seeing the colony of penguins wasn’t exciting enough, our snorkeling adventure later that afternoon was the preverbal cherry on top. As we snorkeled around the island we were able to play with baby sea lions and a few penguins from that colony. They are expert swimmers and can zip in and around the water at a remarkable speed. This afternoon was really the climax of our time in the Galapagos.

Ok, enough with the cuteness overload of the penguins…back to the details of the trip. If you thought Chinese Hat was a barren island, Bartolome proper was really a trip to another world. The entire island is nothing but red clay and lava fields that makes hiking around feel extraterrestrial.

Enough visitors come to this island, that the national park service actually built a raised walking platform that allowed us to scale the elevation with moderate effort. Here, we climbed nearly 270 feet where we were rewarded with a view that literally took our breath away.

As night was falling and our group realized our adventure was close to coming to an end, we persuaded a nearby photographer to capture the whole clan, prior to heading back down to the Samba.

Featured Image: Coming up to Bartolome Island via our Zodiac.