Galapagos Alta
ITINERARY DAY BY DAY
8 days / 7 nights
Sunday to Sunday
Day 1
Arrival at airport / Kicker Rock / Lobos (San Cristobal Island)
Arrival at San Cristobal airport. Guides will meet you, collect your luggage and escort you on the short bus ride to the harbor. Motorized rafts, called 'pangas' will transport you to the M/S Alta.
Isla Lobos means Sea-Lion Island, and the name is certainly appropriate because the frolic, leap and make a racket here. Isla Lobos is located North of San Cristobal, 1 hour across a small channel. It is also a nesting place for blue-footed boobies and a good place for snorkeling; an early panga ride will be offer. Kicker Rock is a magnificent rock in the middle of the sea. Rising 500 feet strait from the ocean, this giant uplifted rock has the shape of a sleeping lion.
Day 2
Prince Philip's Steps / Darwin Bay (Genovesa Island)
A second trail called Prince Philip Steps, leads to an open area for masked boobies, frigates, and red-footed boobies. At the end of this trail are thousands of band-rumped storm petrels at the cliff's edge, where they nest in crevices. Short-eared owls can sometimes be seen here, hunting the storm petrels during daylight hours.
Tower is a collapsed volcano and ships sail directly into its large breached caldera to anchor at the foot of the steep crater walls. Tower attracts vast numbers of pelagic seabirds that come here to nest and breed: great frigate birds, red-footed boobies, swallow-tailed gulls and storm petrels. A trail leads from a coral beach past tidal lagoons where lava gulls and yellow-crowned night herons are seen, then along the low shrubs populated by frigates and boobies, and eventually to a cliff edge where seabirds soar.
Day 3
Punta Vicente Roca (Isabela) / Punta Espinosa (Fernandina)
Isabela, the largest of the Galapagos Islands, looks a bit like a sea horse facing toward the west. Located at the 'mouth' of the head of the sea horse, which forms the northern part of the islands, is Punta Vicente Roca. Here the remnants of an ancient volcano form two turquoise coves with a bay well protected from the ocean swells. Masked and blue-footed boobies sit perched along the point and the sheer cliffs, while flightless cormorants inhabit the shoreline.
Fernandina is the youngest and most active volcano in the Galapagos with eruptions taking place every few years. The flat lava of Punta Espinosa offers a stark and barren landscape, but here flightless cormorants build their nests on the point, sea lions sprawl on the beach or play in the tide pools and marine iguanas dot the sand.
Day 4
Puerto Egas, (Santiago Island) / Bartolome Island
This island has several sites to visit at the western end of James Bay. Puerto Egas with its black sand beaches was the site of small salt mining industry in the 1960s and a hike inland to the salt crater is an excellent opportunity to sight land birds such as finches, doves, and hawks. A walk down the rugged shoreline, especially at low tide, will turn up many marine species as iguanas basking on the rocks and sea lions lazing in the tide pools. At the end of the trail there is a series of grottoes or sea caves where fur seals and night herons are found resting on shady ledges.
Bartolome is a small island that has beautiful white sand beaches, luxuriant green mangroves and a colony of penguins.
Activities will include swimming and snorkeling and a climb to the summit of the island for one of the most breathtaking views in all the Galapagos. From the summit you will have the best view of the Galapagos Pinnacle Rock.
Galapagos Cruises: handpicked yachts and cruises in the Galapagos Islands, last minute deals and group discounts on Galapagos cruises.