We woke up to a nice breeze along the coast of South Plaza Island. After a dry landing, we continued walking up through a trailed covered with some colorful land iguanas. In fact, this was first time we were able to see them in the wild. This small island is flat and decorated with red succulents, a prickly pear forest and many interesting endemic species along the coast. The population of land iguanas we found is up to the a few hundreds, so we saw males, females and some juveniles. Also in the middle of the trail there was a special colony of sea lions which is only used by bachelor or male sea lions. Red billed tropic birds were flying over the cliffs and just giving us quite a photographic show captured with our cameras.
The National Geographic Islander navigated to the second island visiting for the day- Santa Fe. A few guests wanted to explore the shoreline using kayaks, and they found a few sea lions resting on the rocks, sea turtles and plenty of shore birds along the coast. Others decided to explore the underwater world of the Galapagos and snorkeled with rays, turtles and a large variety of fish.
Our last activity led to a hike on Santa Fe, to scope for the Santa Fe land iguana (only found on this island in the whole world). We were quite lucky to spot several of these iguanas, considering their low numbers in recovery after the impact from introduced species.
