Today, we woke up to a beautiful sunny day. After breakfast, we had a dry landing on an uplifted island called South Plaza. The place was covered with yellow land iguanas all over—these cold blooded animals had successfully colonized the island millions of years ago. Some of these reptiles are bigger, more colorful and more attractive than others, due to the difference in age. In the case of the land iguanas, there are three species within the islands. One species is located only in Santa Fe Island, the other one inhabits on six different islands, and the recently-discovered pink land iguana is only on one volcano within Isabela Island. Every one of them found its niche and had to adapt to their home island, surviving out of succulent prickly pear cacti and other greenery as well as sometimes being scavengers.
There are two islands where life inhabits within a unique and astonishing landscape. South Plaza and Santa Fe Islands are very small geological formations, but each one of them has a lot to offer for our guests and that is the reason we spend the whole day exploring here. The land on this island is covered with red succulents, prickly pears, and land iguanas pretty much everywhere if you can spot them out of their almost perfect camouflage. Once aboard, before lunch, we had a talk about the human history of the Galapagos.
After lunch, we dropped anchor and got ready to explore Santa Fe Island. While some went snorkeling, others went kayaking. While snorkeling, we spotted many species of fish. Within the varieties, the yellow-tailed razor surgeons were the most common; in fact we found large shoals of them feeding off the planktonic species on the surface of the ocean. We also spotted a couple of Pacific green sea turtles and diamond sting rays. We hiked on Santa Fe, and we saw a few of the endemic land iguanas, some cactus finches, mockingbirds, and many sea lions. Once on the Zodiacs, as soon as we left the beach, a large school of spotted eagle rays and about 50 white-tipped reef sharks were swimming in the shallow waters, gently moving next to the Zodiacs. We could not have a better day than today!
