Today we arrived at South Plaza Island which is right next to the island of Santa Cruz. This is one of the best places to find Galapagos land iguanas and this morning we found many of these reptiles all along the trail that traverses most of the island. One of the most interesting sightings this morning was a hybrid iguana, locally known as “the weirdoes of Plazas. This is the result of the breeding of a Galapagos land iguana with a marine iguana. This hybrid was walking among a large group of land iguanas and was feeding on a large piece of prickly pear cactus.
This island is very colorful as the vegetation is turning from red to green and the bright yellow color of the land iguanas make a great contrast with the stark landscape. At the end of the morning we returned aboard the National Geographic Islander and started to navigate to Santa Fé Island.
The afternoon began with snorkeling from the Zodiacs in deep waters along the dramatic cliffs of a protected bay. We encountered Galapagos sea lions, green sea turtles, rays and several species of fish. We also had a chance to go on a Zodiac ride along the coast of this island and we marveled at the impressive landscape, the geology and the very tall cacti that resembled sentinels watching over the cliffs. One of the most surprising observations today was a young, male, Juan Fernandez fur seal which is a species we do not often find around Galapagos due to the distance between our archipelago and Juan Fernandez Island, which is located near the coast of Chile.
After all of these activities we returned aboard to get ready and in the late afternoon we went ashore. Some of our guests went on a long walk to look for the endemic Santa Fé land iguana while others took the option of walking on a nearby beach. There sea lions were resting together and some of our guests also observed the very elusive Santa Fé rice rat. While doing bird watching we found some species of birds such as the Galapagos mockingbird, Ruddy turnstone, small ground finch, Galapagos hawk, and brown pelican.
As the sun started to set we returned aboard while enjoying the red color of the sky.
