Galapagos Cruise – Day 3: San Christobal (Cerro Brurujo and Junco Lake)

On day 3 we spent the whole day at San Christobal Island. This is one of the bigger Galapagos islands and is the political capital of the islands.

Our first visit was to a beach at a bay called Cerro Brurujo. Our guide, Juan, spent some time explaining the creation of the Galapagos from a volcanic hotspot under the pacific and the reasons for the spread of animals across the archipelago.

On the beach we found a lot of sealions (there are more than 10 thousand in the Galapagos) and some shore birds.

We did find a couple of unusual things. Firstly a land hermit crab looking for a shell.

and secondly a lava gull. Lava gulls are rare with only 200 pairs in the world.

After our time on the beach we sailed a couple of miles to Kicker rock which is a lone rock in middle of deep water.

This was our snorkelling destination for today and we circumnavigated the big side of the rock. The snorkelling was great with a really high density of turtles – although the water was deep and rewarded deep free dives.

The afternoon excursion was to land at Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, the main town on the island, and visit the Galapagos Interpretation Centre – which to be honest wasn’t very interesting. Then we drove inland to the highland area where there is a volcanic crater lake called Junco Lake. This is notable because frigate birds come to wash their wings in the water. They can’t land on the water though so they have to dip their wings in flybys.

After returning to the town we had an hour or so to wander round. Most shops were shut because it was Sunday but the main point of interest in the town was the apparent invasion by sealions. They were everywhere.