Dragon Hill and El Eden Islet
Our expedition took place on the northern part of Santa Cruz Island and some surrounding Islets. The sun rising at Dragon Hill gave us a great view of the endemic prickly pear cactus forest of this area; our goal during our hike was to find as many land iguanas as we could.
The good light helped us find these huge reptiles; five iguanas near their resting burrows were our sightings of the morning. At the same National Park visitor’s site we found marine iguanas, Darwin’s finches and some coastal birds in a brackish water lagoon, including a solitary flamingo which was busily feeding right in front of us.
Later in the morning, Guy Fawkes became our deep-water snorkeling site; this group of rocks are the remnants of a tuff cone, and the marine life we found was quite diverse. Different species of colorful marine invertebrates were seen attached to the walls of the volcanic cone under water; lots of fish and some sea lions were also hightlights.
In the afternoon, a round of kayaking and zodiac rides were offered at El Eden, a beautiful islet off the coast of Santa Cruz. The mangrove forest along the coast and the marine species, such as spotted eagle rays and matbled rays, made our visit very special. Near the end of the zodiac ride, one of the groups got a visitor onboard their zodiac—this was a very curious juvenile brown pelican, which came and exploredinside the zodiac, ignoring us totally. It was quite atracted to our life jackets!
Shortly afterward everybody went back onboard to start our navigation toward Daphne Major Island. We arrived at sunset time, so we had a sunset cocktail enjoying the scenic view of this amazing place, which is well known in the scientific community, since many scientists, incluiding Peter and Rosemary Grant, have done a lot of studies about Darwin’s finches.
Our circumnavigation of Daphne was succesful, and a great way to finish our day in this paradise!
