Last night National Geographic Endeavour sailed out of Academy Bay on the southeastern end of Santa Cruz Island to the anchorage off Cerro Dragon on the shallow northern shore.
After a nutritious breakfast, we set off to hike around this area that has been named “Dragon Hill” after the yellow and orange land iguanas that inhabit this semi-arid forest of incense trees. As we began our hike along the shore, we noticed that the tide had just turned after reaching its lowest point for the day, and accordingly, the marine iguanas were taking full advantage of the exposed algae beds. As we turned to walk inland, a lone American flamingo was seen making his rounds, filtering the mud of a shallow brackish water lagoon while other small wading birds could be spotted in the distance.
As we reached the loop trail, we could see iguana burrows all around us, and it wasn’t long before we spotted our first land iguana. We usually expect to see only a few, but today turned out to be a particularly good day for iguana spotting. By the time we had completed the loop, we were all very satisfied and even pleasantly surprised at the number of iguanas that we had seen (especially the naturalists!) and so we made our way back to the shore.
After a few minutes back onboard we set out once again, this time to explore the underwater world. Some of our gests returned to the shore to snorkel and swim from a small beach, while others went snorkeling off of our Zodiacs at the nearby Guy Fawkes Islet. Here we spotted big aggregations of fish and many small cleaning stations, where larger fish congregate around a smaller cleaner fish, such as a wrasse or barber fish, and patiently wait to be preened. Some of our guests even got to see a few white-tipped reef sharks and a juvenile Galapagos shark.
Once we had all returned to the ship, we enjoyed a traditional Ecuadorian Feast for lunch. During the afternoon, our naturalist Aura led a handcraft workshop, and naturalist Socrates gave a talk on the life of Charles Darwin. Our artist-in-residence Amy gave an art class as well, while National Geographic Endeavour slowly made its way towards Daphne Major Islet.
