Santa Cruz is the second largest island in the Galapagos archipelago. Yesterday we explored the southern region, where the town of Puerto Ayora is located, and then we moved to the highlands to look for giant tortoises. This morning we explored the northern side of Santa Cruz: a place known as Cerro Dragon, or Dragon Hill. It is hard to believe that we were on the same island—this remote area seems like a different world from the bustling town, full of cars and buildings, that we saw yesterday.
The hike started at a brackish water lagoon, where we found some black-necked stilts and pintail ducks. We hiked to the dry forest of Palo Santo and climbed a small hill, from where we could enjoy an amazing view of the bay. On our way to the summit, we saw some burrows and tracks made by the heavy tails of land iguanas, the Dragons of the Galapagos: there were burrows here and there, and tracks made by heavy tails were all along our trail. Years ago, Cerro Dragon was part of a project to recover the population of Galapagos land iguanas. Unfortunately, they were extinct already in some islands, and endangered on others. Today we have a healthy population back in this restored area, and we witnessed this first-hand today, once our eyes adjusted to finding the iguanas among the vegetation.
After our hike, we were ready for snorkelling! Deep waters are slowly eroding the tuff cones of Guy Fawkes Island, but underwater these cones are covered with hundreds of creatures of different colours: Corals and sponges, sea urchins and sea stars! The snorkelling was very refreshing!
We came back to reposition our ship to an islet known as “Eden”. After lunch we invited all of our guests to celebrate the month of “Conservation in Action” with us! This was our second workshop to learn how to produce jewels out of recycled paper. Many guests came to join us, and then they donated their art to be given to local artisans to make necklaces and bracelets.
The afternoon at Eden was full of activities too: the always fun Zodiac driving lessons for our youngest explorers, the Zodiac rides for our nature lovers, and kayaks for the most energetic ones!
We end the day with a circumnavigation around Daphne Major, with bottle nose dolphins, a wine testing, a beautiful sunset and all of us celebrating this amazing place!
