Cerro Dragón & Sombrero Chino
We began our day exploring the northern part of the Island of Santa Cruz. We got to a place called Cerro Dragon, which translates to English as Dragon Hill. At this site we came across a lot of the Galápagos land iguanas surrounded by a local forest where the giant prickly pear cactus and the Holly stick were more predominant.
Later in the morning, after our walk, some of us went deep water snorkeling to a group of Isles called the Guy Fawkes. These little islands happen to be a big eroded tuff cone that has a great diversity of marine invertebrates along its shoreline; big schools of fish were seen as well as some white tipped reef sharks. One of the highlights during the snorkeling was seeing all the different colors from the marine invertebrates that live in this giant walls formed by tuff.
After our lunch we enjoyed the navigation towards Sombrero Chino which was our next visitor’s site. The geology at this place is amazing. One gets the chance to see several kinds of parasitic cones. Once we drooped the anchor our guests were offered many options so they could get to know more about both the land and marine ecosystems of this area.
Most of us did the deep water snorkeling along a big lava field which, together with the turquoise waters of this site, made this activity really pleasant. We saw several kinds of tropical fish, and a couple of Galápagos penguins diving with us.
We had also kayak opportunities to explore the coast of Sombrero Chino, and some of our guests went to a nice coralline sandy beach.
We finished our day with a big female humpback whale with her calf, which stayed for a long time very close to us. That was truly a close encounter with nature!
