We left the city of Puerto Ayora, navigating to the northeast side of Santa Cruz. As we follow the coast, eventually the outline of two small uplifted satellite islands show, North and South Plaza islands. We decided to go on shore after breakfast and explore the only visitor site on the small island of South Plaza. As soon as we got there the place was full of land iguanas everywhere we looked. Cactus finches were pecking on the prickly pears in search of water. Young and adult iguanas were shading under the shrubs escaping from the heat of the day.
This is one of the natural habitats of the Conolophus Subcristatus, one of the three species of land iguanas found in the Galapagos archipelago. What is interesting about the population found on this island is the crossbreeding behavior that they show when they enter mating season and they find themselves face to face with marine iguanas. In this case, land iguanas and marine iguanas mate and the result is a non-fertile hybrid with a shortened lifespan than its parents. We were lucky to spot one of these hybrids known as “weirdoes.” Life on this islands struggle for their own existence most of the time, so the forest of giant prickly pears are the main natural source of water for all the organisms that inhabit these islands. The warm season is over and the “garua” season has shown up, bringing some mist that is helping the red “Sesuvium carpet weed” turn a bit greener, but still keeping some of the bright red colors it obtained during the previous season.
We left the island of South Plaza, to navigate towards Santa Fe Island. As soon as we dropped anchor, we went out snorkeling around a much protected bay of the coast of this island. Sea turtles, a few spotted eagle rays and a wide variety of fish were seen during the outing. Some guests went out kayaking while the rest were snorkeling. Later on we were back on land to search for the endemic land iguana of Santa Fe (Conolophus Pallidus). This is a rare specimen that camouflages very well with the colors of the dry grasses and the brown soil on this island. We were lucky to spot several individuals and along the hike we also found the endemic Santa Fé Rice Rat and one of the endemic Striped Galapagos snakes.
Once we got back to the white sand beach where we originally landed, as we were already taking our shoes off to go back on the Zodiac, a cute baby Galapagos Sea Lion stole one of the shoes that belonged to one of our guests and sat on it as it was its new toy! We finally rescued the shoe (a strange, but funny mission accomplished for us naturalists).
What I think was fascinating and maybe one of the most magical moments of the trip, was encountering around 150 spotted eagle rays just swimming inside the bay of Santa Fe, together with a cow-nosed golden ray and close to 20 white tip reef sharks patrolling the coast in search of some pray.
