Puerto Egas

  Isla Santiago, Ecuador
Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Note: The cruise was fantastic, incredible, unique. The pictures and text won't reflect that, sorry. Most of the time the light was quite poor, and moreover I had better to do than take pictures. Seeing wildlife from so close isjust an unmissable occasion to just... watch it!
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In the morning we were in James bay, Santiago Island.
We had a big walk along the bay, including on the intertidal zone, where Juan shoed us different species of sea animals, sea stars, sea slugs, sea cucumbers, urchins, we even came across a small moray eel (murene).

We sat for a while looking at a young hawk on the rocks. A puppy sea lion saw him too, and came investigating. It took him a while to get into the pond to approach the hawk. When the pup got close, the hawk just flew to the other side of the pond. No stress, just safety distance. We were quite close, we could watch the hawk checking out the surroundings, the pup playing in the pond, crabs walking a round, and in the background, marine iguanas basking.

Further down, there wew collapsed lava tunnels, resulting in arches over canals of sea water. In there we could admire turtles and fur seals. Fur seals are different from sea lions. They are the specie that was hunted for their fur, so they are less approchable. Instead of basking in the sun, they choose rocky shores, to get some shade, otherwise they´d get too hot. A female was up on the rocks, 2 meters above the water. She had jumped there, from what the guide told us!
A male was swimming in the lava canal, smooth and beautiful.

A marine iguana swam into the lava canal, his body ondulating as he used his tail to propel himself, head sticking out of the water. He came to the small cliff... and just started to climb it, vertically, as if he was on flat ground! He reached the top, where he stood still, basking.


Back to the beach, there were loads of boobies diving into the bay, plunging simultenaously from 15 meters high, then popping out one by one from the water.

We got ready for snorkeling. It was, again, great: lots of small fish, and sea turtles!

Back near the beach, a couple of young sea lions came by, I stayed another... don´t know how long playing with them, twisting and jumping out and accelerating and and and... it was great, they look, try to do better, actually do much better than me, and always with a big eye looking at me, it was fabulous, again.