Galapagos is a wildlife sanctuary, and today we enjoyed even more of its natural wonders as we visited the northern side of Santa Cruz Island. Cerro Dragon was our first destination. After a comfortable dry landing we went in search of the dragons of the Galapagos: land iguanas. We quickly found large male marine iguanas sunning themselves on the rocks, followed by ghost crabs, brown pelicans and ruddy turnstones on the beautiful white sand beach.
Further on the trail, a brackish lagoon hosted a number of black-neck stilts and three white-cheeked pintail ducks feeding on crustaceans. As soon as we came into the incense tree forest, a magical combination of green vegetation and land birds surrounded us. In the heart of Cerro Dragon, we finally spotted our first Galapagos land iguana in some vegetation. As soon as we gave the iguana some space, it came toward us before disappearing again into the vegetation. At the summit of Cerro Dragon, we lingered for an awe-inspiring view of the marvelous landscape before heading back to the National Geographic Endeavour.
The next adventure of the day was deep-water snorkeling. The magnificence of the Galapagos marine reserve was on display as soon as we entered the water. Enormous amounts of fish surrounded us as we snorkeled among the colorful rocks. A highlight was the presence of Pacific green sea turtles enjoying the company of playful Galapagos sea lions.
In the afternoon, our next destination was Wolf Volcano, which entered an eruptive phase two weeks ago. We arrived at the Cabo Marshall area at 7:30 in the evening, and the bright lava display was easily seen from the bow of our ship. The fresh lava flows reminded us that these islands were created by the same activity hundreds of thousands of years ago. At the end of our journey, the erupting volcano was complemented by the presence of stars and constellations in the sky.
