Plazas and Santa Fe islands
It is Thursday and a sunny morning and blue sky are waiting for us outside the National Geographic Islander. The rain has not been here lately though it is the rainy season, we have been very lucky. We get ready for our walk on Plazas, a very tiny island to the east of Santa Cruz, which is the second largest island. Plazas is very well known for land iguanas and cactus finches, as well as seabirds and a huge colony of Galápagos sea lions. I call this, “the iguana day,” because in the morning you see all the Galápagos species, and in the afternoon the Santa Fe species of the three kinds of land iguanas found on the islands including the pink iguana, which was discovered only a few years ago on Wolf Volcano on Isabela Island.
Here, we also found a very weird animal; it is a hybrid iguana as result of the interbreeding between land and marine iguanas that share the same ecosystem. A few feet from the high tide mark opuntias cactus grow, and they are the main source of food for these small Galápagos dragons. Along the walk red billed tropic birds showed off, and there are beautiful ocean travelers, such as boobies, shearwaters, frigates, and pelicans gliding above our heads. After our walk we jumped from our ship to cool off in the refreshing Galapagos seas. A few minutes later we offered our guests a lecture on geology, “How Galápagos Formed,” followed by Walter, our photo instructor on board who discussed some details about camera settings with our avid learners.
On our way to Santa Fe, our next afternoon stop, we passed by Gordon Rocks, one of the best Scuba diving sites of the islands. It is a very old tuff formation collapsed and very eroded, but impressive to our eyes as they resist dying.
I’m so exciting about snorkeling at Santa Fe, preparing the underwater camera. I wait anxious to jump in this turquoise-blue bay, I like it, it has plenty of marine life. Once there the activity was super, this time I found a moray, I got a good shoot of it with the underwater camera. There were fish, turtles, a Galápagos shark seen by some of our snorkelers—as always this is a great place.
During our walk we found the very unique Santa Fé land iguanas, the forest of giant cacti, flight catchers, and the king of the islands, “The Galápagos hawk.” Then at the end of the walk we saw some playful baby sea lions on the beach that filled our day full of positivism, good karma, and great energy to continue our expedition around this magical world of the enchanted islands.
