South Plazas and Santa Fe Islands
We anchored today at South Plazas Island with our great ship National Geographic Islander. The island is quite small and sits at the eastern side of Santa Cruz. It is home to a population of Galápagos land iguanas, which was in danger of extinction by hundreds of feral goats. In 1971 the goats were exterminated. These efforts of the Galápagos National Park restored a healthy population of iguanas. Tree-like prickly pear cacti are their main territories, surrounded by Galápagos carpet-weed, with leaves that turn from green to yellow and from orange to red. The boulders made the walk uneven and interesting. At the end of the trail we found a sea lion bachelor’s colony. The younger males waited for a chance to fight for a real territory, the older ones were telling fish tales. The morning was scorching hot, so we jumped from the ship to swim among sharks. It was a lot of fun for the sharks.
In the afternoon, we navigated to Santa Fe Island, and the waves were the highest of the year. The island was crowded with sea lion pups and their mums feeding them, so the landing was really colorful and smelly. The trail at Santa Fe Island goes across a forest of palo-santo trees and giant Opuntia cacti. The iguanas were special as well: found nowhere else in the world, the Santa Fe land iguana. A party of brave hikers climbed all the way to the summit of a cliff from where they could feel the wind while enjoying an amazing view of the bay…that was another day in Paradise…
