Bartolomé Island
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Interesting facts
- Pinnacle Rock is a volcanic plug, part of a largely eroded volcanic dike that once connected Bartolomé to neighbouring Santiago Island.
- Several lichen species of the genus Ramalina found on Pinnacle Rock are endemic to the Galápagos.
- Much of the island is built from tuff cones, formed when rising magma met seawater and exploded into ash that later hardened.
- The lava cactus, one of the smallest cacti in the archipelago, is among the few pioneer plants able to root in Bartolomé's bare lava.
- Silvery mats of Tiquilia, a pioneer plant adapted to dry volcanic ash, are almost the only vegetation along the slopes.
- Whitetip reef sharks, spotted eagle rays and the odd-looking red-lipped batfish live in the waters around the island.
- Bartholomew Sulivan, the island's namesake, later became an admiral and hydrographer who surveyed the Falkland Islands.
- After Captain FitzRoy's death in 1865, Sulivan persuaded the government to grant his family £3,000, and Charles Darwin added £100 of his own.
Why it is worth it
Bartolomé Island is the image many people carry of the Galápagos: a small, bare volcanic island of red, orange and black cinder, with a crescent of pale sand on either side of a narrow isthmus and, at the edge of the water, the jagged spire of Pinnacle Rock. The island covers only about 1.2 square kilometres, yet from its summit, 114 metres above the sea, the view takes in spatter cones, lava flows and the wide dark fields of neighbouring Santiago Island across Sullivan Bay.
The landscape looks freshly made, and in geological terms it is. Like most of the Galápagos, Bartolomé is entirely volcanic, and almost nothing grows on its slopes apart from a few hardy pioneer plants. Pinnacle Rock, the island's landmark, is the eroded remnant of a volcanic formation built of thin layers of basalt, standing alone at the water's edge. A trail of about 600 metres, much of it a wooden stairway laid over the loose cinder, climbs to the summit lookout, passing spatter cones and small craters along the way.
The island is named after Sir Bartholomew James Sulivan, who served as a lieutenant aboard HMS Beagle, the ship that carried Charles Darwin through the archipelago in 1835. Its waters are as remarkable as its rocks. Galápagos penguins, the only penguins that live and breed on the equator, have a small breeding colony in a cave behind Pinnacle Rock, and green sea turtles come ashore to nest on the northern beach. The island was used as a filming location for the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
Getting there
Bartolomé lies just east of Santiago Island in the Galápagos archipelago of Ecuador. There is no settlement on the island; the nearest town is Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island, about 60 km to the south, and visits are made by boat. The nearest airport is Seymour Galápagos Ecological Airport (GPS) on Baltra, about 37 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Bartolomé Island is an uninhabited 1.2 square kilometres (0.46 sq mi) volcanic islet located in Sullivan Bay, just east of Santiago Island, in the Galápagos Islands. just off the east coast of Santiago Island. The island, along with the bay it sits in, are named after naturalist Sir Bartholomew James Sulivan, who was a lieutenant aboard HMS Beagle. The island is a popular tourist destination, with attractions including the wildlife and the famous Pinnacle Rock that juts out over Sullivan Bay.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
-0.28500, -90.54861per Wikidata