South Plaza and Santa Fe Islands
Our navigation started at 2am towards South Plaza Island, which is situated off the eastern coast of Santa Cruz Island. After breakfast, we went ashore to explore this small island; land iguanas were surrounding us at every step. A baby land iguana showed up right beside us, it seemed like it was just a couple of weeks old! Walking along the Trail of Plazas gave us the chance to find big groups of sea lions and a lot of seabirds such as Galápagos shearwaters and red-billed tropicbirds.
After the hike our guests had some time for swimming from the ship, some of them jumped from nearly the highest deck of the ship.
In the afternoon, we explored Santa Fe Island. Kayaking, deep water snorkeling and two different hikes were offered to our guests in this wonderful spot. The highlights in Santa Fe were the white-tipped reef sharks, the many baby sea lions, and a species of land iguana endemic to this island. We found a big dry forest with giant prickly pear cactus, this particular variety has the widest trunks in the archipelago, and some of them grow trunks of more than three feet in diameter.
The day was full of emotions, and returning to the ship we had a beautiful sunset that lit up the sky — it seemed like one of the islands was erupting!
