Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos
We awoke bright and early today for the next episode of our week-long exploratory expedition of the famed Galápagos Archipelago. We spent the whole previous day exploring the southern slope of the second largest island of the group, Santa Cruz, with its bustling human settlements and lush green highlands. We traveled but a short distance overnight, to the north-western side of the very same island, yet we seem to have entered a whole new world!
The northern slopes of Santa Cruz are located in the rain shadow of the island, with respect to the moisture-laden air masses blown in from the south-east. It thus sports abundant arid zone vegetation and an extensive tropical dry forest principally made up of the drought-deciduous “Palo Santo” trees and two towering cacti genera.
We explored the area during Zodiac cruises and kayaking outings through an extensive mangrove ecosystem, home to comparatively voracious predators (for the Galápagos, at least) such as the great blue heron and a handful of sharks and rays. Peaceful green sea turtles grazed on the mangrove roots, whilst a variety of Darwin’s finches and other birds flitted amongst the terrestrial vegetation. The intense black hue of the basaltic lava that makes up the coastline here was an impressive backdrop to the startling turquoise feet of the boobies and the crimson explosions of the Sally light foot crabs.
Other activities today included snorkeling along dizzying underwater cliffs covered in tufts of black coral and other invertebrates, and swarming with extensive schools of colourful reef fish… And nature walks along brackish lagoons inhabited by flamingos and lined with towering giant Opuntia cactus trees before reaching the nesting and breeding grounds of the brightly-coloured, endemic Galápagos land iguana.
We returned on board to celebrate a very special Thanksgiving – a day in which we all felt we had even more than usual to be thankful for! Especially the fact that special places like the Galápagos still exist on our planet Earth.
We awoke bright and early today for the next episode of our week-long exploratory expedition of the famed Galápagos Archipelago. We spent the whole previous day exploring the southern slope of the second largest island of the group, Santa Cruz, with its bustling human settlements and lush green highlands. We traveled but a short distance overnight, to the north-western side of the very same island, yet we seem to have entered a whole new world!
The northern slopes of Santa Cruz are located in the rain shadow of the island, with respect to the moisture-laden air masses blown in from the south-east. It thus sports abundant arid zone vegetation and an extensive tropical dry forest principally made up of the drought-deciduous “Palo Santo” trees and two towering cacti genera.
We explored the area during Zodiac cruises and kayaking outings through an extensive mangrove ecosystem, home to comparatively voracious predators (for the Galápagos, at least) such as the great blue heron and a handful of sharks and rays. Peaceful green sea turtles grazed on the mangrove roots, whilst a variety of Darwin’s finches and other birds flitted amongst the terrestrial vegetation. The intense black hue of the basaltic lava that makes up the coastline here was an impressive backdrop to the startling turquoise feet of the boobies and the crimson explosions of the Sally light foot crabs.
Other activities today included snorkeling along dizzying underwater cliffs covered in tufts of black coral and other invertebrates, and swarming with extensive schools of colourful reef fish… And nature walks along brackish lagoons inhabited by flamingos and lined with towering giant Opuntia cactus trees before reaching the nesting and breeding grounds of the brightly-coloured, endemic Galápagos land iguana.
We returned on board to celebrate a very special Thanksgiving – a day in which we all felt we had even more than usual to be thankful for! Especially the fact that special places like the Galápagos still exist on our planet Earth.
