Wednesday Walk Challenge : Wildlife and nature walk on Isla Fernandina, Galápagos

On today's wedensday walk, I will take you to the Isla Fernandina, the third largest island in the Galápagos archipelago. These islands are known for their unique wildlife and became famous after Charles Darwin set foot on San Cristobal in 1835. It was his encounter with the wildlife that set him on the trail of the theory of evolution. Since then, the islands have been of interest to scientists, but also lots of tourists have discovered the islands. When I was in Ecuador last year in November, I made sure to visit these islands as well as the main land. In order to discover some of the diversity on the islands I did a cruise on board a small ship to several islands. Our guide was a local marine biologist from the Santa Cruz. He had grown up on these islands, so he had a lot of knowledge about both wildlife and life on the islands in general.

Our first stop with the possibility to go ashore was at Punta Espinosa. It is a rather narrow peace of land. When we landed on the island, we were met by a couple of grown up sea lions. The next species we saw was the Marine Iguana. After a short walk we realized that there are hundreds of them!

Many of them gather in large groups. When they are sunbathing on the black lava rocks, they are dificult to spot. So look closely at the photos to check if can see them! Those on the white sand was easy to see, but on the black rocks we almost stumple upon them! They don't look so pretty, but at least they are vegetarians.

The landscape is quite spectacular as well. At this place the land had both been raised and lowered quite a lot of times. It is estmated that it has raised approximately 40 cm. That's why it is possible to see corals and mangrove being exposed in certain areas. The coast is dominated by the lava flows. The black rocks does dominate the shores. Just like the other islands, Fernandina too, was created by volcanic activity. On the centre of the island the La Cumbre volcano is dominating the small island.

As we continues, we saw more sea lions. They are found in in large numbers on the island as well. This was the time when they had young cubs. Some of them were only a couple of weeks old. The mothers will leave them alone for a couple of days, while they are at sea feeding on fish. But the cubs are fine. They only need to nurse twice a week. The one on the photos above was alone, but woke up posing for us, as we approached. These youngsters were very curious and completely relaxed around us humans. It's clear they're used to human paparazzi!

We saw lots of the Sally Lightfoot crabs. They were mostly at the water edge. Against the black lava they were so easy to spot because of the red color.

Almost at the end of our walk we get the opportunity to see the lava Cactus. This plant was among the first species to grow on this island. They are huge! They don't need much water to grow up, so this climate suits them well.

On our way back to where we started, we also passed a skelleton. It is huge, so we guessed it must be a whale skeleton. It turned out to be correct. There are many more species, like sea birds and penguins, which we didn't see. When in the small «panga» on our way back to the boat we saw seaturtles at the surface of the water.

The highlight on this walk was definitly the marine iguanas. This was the first time I have seen them in real life. Great to get a close encounter with these very special animals.