Santiago Island cruises

About the island

Santiago Island

Santiago, also known as San Salvador and, to old English sailors, James Island, lies in the center of the Galápagos. Charles Darwin spent nine days here in October 1835, and the island offers some of the most striking volcanic landscapes in the archipelago, together with fur seals, marine iguanas and excellent snorkeling.

Santiago covers 572 square kilometers (221 square miles) and rises to 905 meters (2,970 feet). It has no human residents. Salt was extracted from a crater near James Bay in the 1920s and the 1960s, and a colonization attempt in the 1930s failed. The goats, pigs and donkeys introduced in the past were removed by 2006, in one of the largest island restoration projects ever carried out.

On our cruises Santiago appears in most central and western routes, usually combined with Santa Cruz, Bartolomé, North Seymour, Isabela and Fernandina. At James Bay, Puerto Egas (Egas Port) is a wet landing on a black-sand beach, with a coastal trail of lava pools and grottoes where Galápagos fur seals rest in the shade, and a longer hike inland to the old salt mine crater. Espumilla Beach is a sea turtle nesting beach with a trail through the dry forest, and Buccaneer Cove, once an anchorage for pirates, is explored by panga along its cliffs. Sullivan Bay, on the east coast, is a walk across a lava flow formed in the second half of the 1800s, its ropy pahoehoe surface still black and almost bare. Across a narrow channel, Chinese Hat, a small cone-shaped islet, adds snorkeling with sea lions and, sometimes, Galápagos penguins.

The Santiago rice rat, once thought extinct, was rediscovered in 1997, and the coasts of the island are among the best places to see fur seals, which have thicker fur and larger eyes than sea lions. Galápagos hawks often watch the trails from above.

Santiago suits travelers who enjoy geology and photography. The lava at Sullivan Bay is uneven and has no shade, and the trail at Puerto Egas crosses slippery rocks near the pools.

Fast facts

• Charles Darwin spent nine days on Santiago, then called James Island, in October 1835.
• The lava field of Sullivan Bay formed in the second half of the 1800s and is still almost bare.
• Goats, pigs and donkeys were removed from Santiago by 2006.