Santa Cruz and North Seymour Islands
Early in the morning, we arrived to Santa Cruz Island and dropped our anchor in Academy Bay located in the southern side of this island. Our expedition started visiting the Galápagos tortoise reserve up on the highlands. Our walk took us through lushly dense vegetation where giant land tortoises find lots of grass and different types of plants to graze. Several males giant tortoises like this one on the picture were found; we did encounter one couple hiding behind the bushes just resting together, lots of Darwin finches were also observed cleaning some parasites of the tortoises while others were looking for fruits and seeds of different sizes with their well specialized beaks.
After visiting the reserve, we had our well deserved breakfast, and once our energies were replenished, we headed towards the town of Puerto Ayora where we spent some time exploring by ourselves the largest town in the Galápagos.
For our afternoon, we arrived to the Island of North Seymour which is one of the places to find a large colony of magnificent frigate birds, and some of them were in full mating display with their red sacs that resembles so much to a huge fire red balloon, females were flying above these males to have a look and perhaps decide which one they were going to select as their mate.
At the end of our walk, we found a short eared owl sitting on a rock. This was a great surprise as owls do not live on this island. We were guessing it should have come from Santa Cruz Island as it is the nearest island where owls live.
We had a wonderful day and lots of good memories to share with every one.
Early in the morning, we arrived to Santa Cruz Island and dropped our anchor in Academy Bay located in the southern side of this island. Our expedition started visiting the Galápagos tortoise reserve up on the highlands. Our walk took us through lushly dense vegetation where giant land tortoises find lots of grass and different types of plants to graze. Several males giant tortoises like this one on the picture were found; we did encounter one couple hiding behind the bushes just resting together, lots of Darwin finches were also observed cleaning some parasites of the tortoises while others were looking for fruits and seeds of different sizes with their well specialized beaks.
After visiting the reserve, we had our well deserved breakfast, and once our energies were replenished, we headed towards the town of Puerto Ayora where we spent some time exploring by ourselves the largest town in the Galápagos.
For our afternoon, we arrived to the Island of North Seymour which is one of the places to find a large colony of magnificent frigate birds, and some of them were in full mating display with their red sacs that resembles so much to a huge fire red balloon, females were flying above these males to have a look and perhaps decide which one they were going to select as their mate.
At the end of our walk, we found a short eared owl sitting on a rock. This was a great surprise as owls do not live on this island. We were guessing it should have come from Santa Cruz Island as it is the nearest island where owls live.
We had a wonderful day and lots of good memories to share with every one.
