Cerro Dragon and Daphne Island
Located in the central part of the archipelago, Santa Cruz offers a great number of places to visit and unique creatures living in each one of them. Yesterday we visited the highlands of the island but today we sailed west to visit Dragon Hill, an enigmatic place baptized in honor of the land iguanas found there. At a distance, the landscape looked cloudy with the highlands farther than yesterday and a very calm sea.
After breakfast, we headed to the island; we crossed the white sandy beach and finally we arrived to the lagoon, where the first surprise was waiting for us. A group of flamingoes in a feeding frenzy stirred the muddy bottom with their long bills, filtering some crustaceans and producing unmistakable sounds and leaving a great number of tracks around the lagoon. They approached so close to us with no fear that was very easy to take good pictures of all of them together.
Walking inland we arrived to the land iguanas’ territory. We observed many empty burrows where they sleep or keep warm at night. Just a few minutes later we observed many land iguanas laid on the ground, warming their yellow bodies with the first beams of sun. The vegetation was dry compared with the greenery observed yesterday in the same island; the reason was the lack of rainfall, due to distance from the highlands.
Back to the sea shore, the flamingos were still there sharing the lagoon with other waders while on the rocks, lava and great blue herons tried to catch some crabs. Afterwards, we headed back to the National Geographic Endeavour to swim and snorkel along the Guy Fawkes Islets.
With great visibility we started snorkeling from the North. Sea lions, colorful fish and a great number of invertebrates along the vertical walls were the best attractions. Our guests enjoyed taking a lot of photos and swimming with curious and playful sea lions.
In the afternoon, we circumnavigated North Seymour, the conical islet where Rosemary Grant and her husband studied the Darwin finches years ago. It looked full of birds, such as blue and Nazca boobies, terns, tropic birds, swallow tailed gulls and others who took advantage of the terrain to make their nests, leaving their guano marks everywhere.
Little by little the sky was turning orange and then reddish. In the west the spectacular sunset said the day was over, leaving our minds with great memories.
