Today we started at sunrise with a panga ride to the red beaches (mostly iron oxide) of Rabida Island. When disembarking we were greeted by pelicans and sea lions whilst across the vegetation covered berm was a saltwater lagoon with a colony of American flamingos engaged in feeding with their heads in the water. Alongside …
After a very early morning journey we stopped at Santiago Island. Here is a complicated mass of ash and spatter cones and blocks of tephra now being eroded by the sea in addition to differential weathering along the guano spattered cliff sections. We witnessed this in Buccaneer Cove on the northwest coast of the island. …
We repositioned overnight across the Equator to Baltra Island. During the afternoon we travelled by panga to Las Bachas beach. This amazing ‘organic’ white beach consisted of eroded shells and coral linking tephra headlands and backed by lechos trees, mangroves and lagoons which are the feeding grounds and home to flamingos, great blue herons, black …
Having crossed from Santa Cruz overnight, at 6:00 a.m. we dropped anchor off the island of Floriana – the smallest of the inhabited islands with a population of around 200 people. A panga cruise took us around a bay west of Punta Cormorant. Here the lava flows had either slowly cooled or reached the sea …
After an overnight journey anchored off the harbour at Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island. The highlands of the island have a rich variety of plant life – dense forests including the local lechoso trees, orchids and mistletoe, sugar cane, cacao, coffee and bananas. The first visit was to the Charles Darwin Research Station opened …
We arrived at Punta Vicente Isabela at 06:00 after an overnight crossing of this part of the Pacific and at midnight the Equator taking us into the Southern Hemisphere. We took a panga (dinghy) cruise along the coastline where we saw the remains, following a destructive collapse of the Volcan Ecuador. We took a panga …
Today we flew from Quito to the islands and at lunchtime embarked upon the MS Santa Cruz II and moved to a remote part of Santa Cruz Island for our introduction to the area.
Quito’s Equatorial position meant that sunrise was at 5:56 a.m. and a sunset expected at 6:05 p.m. From the hotel room and the tour bus the geographical and morphological characteristics of the city were visible. The whole region near the city is one of mountains and canyons with the altiplano (plateau) in between. This restricts …
The journey to the Galapagos Islands started with a short hop to Amsterdam, an overnight stay at the airport and a 5,948 mile on 14th to Quito. The Great Circle Route to South America crosses the Atlantic so far from land that this is only spotted when reaching the Caribbean. We landed at the World’s …