Santa Cruz Island
Last night we reluctantly left behind the volcanic eruption at Cape Hammond, Fernandina, our only consolation the thought of all the new adventures awaiting us today. We spent the night travelling to our anchorage spot in Academy Bay, located on the southern coast of Santa Cruz Island.
One of the most exciting things about an expedition through the Galápagos is that every single day offers entirely new experiences of entirely different facets of this complex, fascinating archipelago. Today’s experiences in Santa Cruz could not be more different that our experiences in Fernandina, on many different levels.
Between yesterday and today, for example, we travelled through time! From Fernandina’s tall, erupting shield volcano, flanks covered in stark black lava flows, where we were brought close to the very formation of the Galápagos, we travelled to a much older island, now extinct, whose caldera and lava flows are no longer evident due to millennia of erosion and weathering. The flanks of this volcano, in absolute contrast to yesterday, are now covered n vegetation, the nature of which varies with altitude.
While life on Fernandina is completely restricted to the most bizarre of life forms, thousands of enormous marine iguanas, sea turtles, flightless cormorants and tiny equatorial penguins, with no sign of human life except for our fellow shipmates, on Santa Cruz we reach a bustling centre of modern civilization, a town inhabited by close to 20 000 people, with roads, cars, restaurants, markets and most of the other trappings of our human world. It is mainly due to the dedication of a large part of these inhabitants and local institutions like the National Park Service and Charles Darwin Foundation, which we visited today, that the pristine ecosystems of Fernandina and other islands can survive to this day.
While all our explorations on the past few days were spent in the arid inland and coastal ecosystems that dominate the Galápagos landscapes, on Santa Cruz we were able to revel in the lush greenery that coats the higher altitudes of this large island. The prickly pear and incense tree forests give way to strange, epiphyte-laden cloud forests, created by a giant form of “daisy” – the endemic genus Scalesia. Although masked by vegetation, the volcanic origins of the island are not altogether obliterated: it is riddled with lava tunnels and in the heart of the cloud forest we came across a couple of giant twin pit craters, where the flanks of the volcano had sunken down into the empty spaces below, giving us a look at the layers of basaltic lava that had piled up to build the island.
These highlands are also home to different but no-less fascinating animals. We hiked in pastures to find giant Galápagos tortoises in their natural habitat, and searched the forest for bird species not found in the arid zones. The most exciting sighting of the afternoon, for many, was the amazing little woodpecker finch – one of very few tool-using birds in the world. Although we didn’t see it pick up a tool, it was delightful to watch the industrious little bird as it peeled away the bark of the Scalesia trees to get at the grubs below, yet another example of the amazing adaptive radiation undergone by the thirteen descendants of that one ancestral finch species.
After a day full of discovery, we returned to the National Geographic Endeavour, where the Director of Technical Assistance to the CDF, Felipe Cruz, gave us many insights into the modern day reality of the Galápagos, a place we have come to love over the last few days.
Last night we reluctantly left behind the volcanic eruption at Cape Hammond, Fernandina, our only consolation the thought of all the new adventures awaiting us today. We spent the night travelling to our anchorage spot in Academy Bay, located on the southern coast of Santa Cruz Island.
One of the most exciting things about an expedition through the Galápagos is that every single day offers entirely new experiences of entirely different facets of this complex, fascinating archipelago. Today’s experiences in Santa Cruz could not be more different that our experiences in Fernandina, on many different levels.
Between yesterday and today, for example, we travelled through time! From Fernandina’s tall, erupting shield volcano, flanks covered in stark black lava flows, where we were brought close to the very formation of the Galápagos, we travelled to a much older island, now extinct, whose caldera and lava flows are no longer evident due to millennia of erosion and weathering. The flanks of this volcano, in absolute contrast to yesterday, are now covered n vegetation, the nature of which varies with altitude.
While life on Fernandina is completely restricted to the most bizarre of life forms, thousands of enormous marine iguanas, sea turtles, flightless cormorants and tiny equatorial penguins, with no sign of human life except for our fellow shipmates, on Santa Cruz we reach a bustling centre of modern civilization, a town inhabited by close to 20 000 people, with roads, cars, restaurants, markets and most of the other trappings of our human world. It is mainly due to the dedication of a large part of these inhabitants and local institutions like the National Park Service and Charles Darwin Foundation, which we visited today, that the pristine ecosystems of Fernandina and other islands can survive to this day.
While all our explorations on the past few days were spent in the arid inland and coastal ecosystems that dominate the Galápagos landscapes, on Santa Cruz we were able to revel in the lush greenery that coats the higher altitudes of this large island. The prickly pear and incense tree forests give way to strange, epiphyte-laden cloud forests, created by a giant form of “daisy” – the endemic genus Scalesia. Although masked by vegetation, the volcanic origins of the island are not altogether obliterated: it is riddled with lava tunnels and in the heart of the cloud forest we came across a couple of giant twin pit craters, where the flanks of the volcano had sunken down into the empty spaces below, giving us a look at the layers of basaltic lava that had piled up to build the island.
These highlands are also home to different but no-less fascinating animals. We hiked in pastures to find giant Galápagos tortoises in their natural habitat, and searched the forest for bird species not found in the arid zones. The most exciting sighting of the afternoon, for many, was the amazing little woodpecker finch – one of very few tool-using birds in the world. Although we didn’t see it pick up a tool, it was delightful to watch the industrious little bird as it peeled away the bark of the Scalesia trees to get at the grubs below, yet another example of the amazing adaptive radiation undergone by the thirteen descendants of that one ancestral finch species.
After a day full of discovery, we returned to the National Geographic Endeavour, where the Director of Technical Assistance to the CDF, Felipe Cruz, gave us many insights into the modern day reality of the Galápagos, a place we have come to love over the last few days.
