Plazas and Santa Fe Islands
Today is Thursday, another day of enjoying and exploring my homeland. In the morning we visited Plazas Island, a very small uplifted area with plenty of wildlife.
At eight o‘clock we disembarked to walk with our adventurous travelers. The first impression you get as soon as you set foot here is of the sheer number of Galápagos sea lions along the shore. They are mostly babies because November and December is when the females deliver their pups. They congregate in these very little pools to play as if they’re in a nursery, while “papa” is patrolling its harem and chasing any intruder away. No doubt sea lions are the most playful friendly animals on the islands, without them it would not be the same—they are the special touch of the Galápagos happiness.
During our walk along the trail we found many colorful land iguanas. Males and females were warming up and staying close to a special species of opuntia cacti, just waiting for any falling fruit to start the day. Meanwhile marine iguanas in the same territory were looking for a companion for mating. In fact, here, you can see the interbreeding between two species of iguanas. This hybrid looks like a marine iguana but stays on land and has some yellowish rings around its body.
Later, along the cliff a breeze kicked up to cool us off a bit, the day was hot. It was a great moment to see several seabirds flying past such as frigates, pelicans, shearwaters, blue and Nazca boobies, red-billed tropicbirds, swallow-tailed gulls, while on land the red-purple-green sesuvium shrubs covered a big area of plazas, offering a nice contrast of colors and layers between the blue sky and the turquoise blue ocean. Later back on board some of our travelers jumped from the National Geographic Islander to cool off in the ocean.
After naturalist Jonathan spoke about the human history in Galápagos and a delicious Peruvian lunch, we visited Santa Fé. This is a medium-sized island with some unique creatures such as rice rats, Santa Fé land iguanas, and a great endemic forest of giant cacti. First kayakers got ready to explore the shoreline in search of seabirds, marine turtles and any other surprise, and then snorkelers jumped off the Zodiacs to be one more time in this fascinating marine world full of life, my special surprise was to find a hawksbill marine turtle, rarely seen around here.
Later on we landed on the beach of Santa Fé, and during our walk we saw all what we were expecting. Finally, taking in a beautiful sunset and spending some time on the beach observing the sea lion colony our day ended.
