After spending the previous whole day in the southern part of Santa Cruz Island, today we had a chance to spend the whole day on the northern side of the same Island. Even though it is the same volcano, the ecological condition is very different from one side to the other. This natural phenomenon occurs because the prevailing winds come from the southeast, bringing all the moisture from the Pacific Ocean, which is trapped in the south slope of the island. Meanwhile, the northern side receives very little precipitation. This applies to the entire archipelago.
The Galapagos flora and fauna have adapted to surviving under harsh conditions. When native and endemic plants have precipitation, they take full advantage to start flowering. When they face dry conditions, they save water inside the plant. One of the best examples of such impressive adaptation is the prickly pear cactus, where they can survive for over a year with almost no water.
Land iguanas and many other endemic and native animals have coevolved next to these plants. When they have good conditions they eat, drink and breed, and when they don’t have much food, because there’s no rain, they just wait until they have better conditions. That is what we call coevolution of two species in Galapagos, and here we have lots of those special adaptations.
In the morning we disembark to search for iguanas in Dragon Hill. Our guests were astonished to actually see these dragons roaming in the wild, a perfect match up for this kind of environment. Prickly pear cacti are waiting for rain to come and male land iguanas are protecting their territories, just in case another male may take over, while females were walking as free as they please.
To finish our morning activity and cool ourselves down a bit, we went out for deep water snorkeling on a small island known as Guy Fawkes. This snorkeling site has one of the most colorful walls for water activities: coral, nudibranchs, sea stars, sea urchins, sea sponges, big aggregation of different species of fish and the always playful Galapagos sea lions.
For the afternoon we had a Zodiac ride along the northern coast of Santa Cruz Island, where we have lots of hidden bays, perfect for entering with our sophisticated Zodiacs to search for baby sharks, blue footed boobies diving, pelicans, frigates, sea lions hunting and turtles. Finally we finish our day with a marvelous National Geographic Endeavour ride around Daphne Major.
