Cerro Dragón & Sombrero Chino
Santa Cruz Island is located in the heart of the Galápagos archipelago. This is also one of the four inhabited islands. Yesterday, we visited the southern part of this island, including its moist uplands, but today we are back in the dry, arid zone of its northern coast.
Early in the morning we set off to visit a site called Cerro Dragon, where we expected to find the remaining population of land iguanas of Santa Cruz. It was a breezy morning, so we had to be a bit patient in order to find them, as these reptiles are ectothermic and they had to wait for the morning sunrays to warm up their territories.
This area has a unique beauty: dry vegetation dominates the scene, mainly species like the incense trees or ‘palo santos’ and the prickly pears or ‘Opuntias’. The latter are vital for the survival of the land iguanas, as they provide much of their food and water.
The morning started to get a little warm, so we all returned back on board the National Geographic Endeavour. Every chance to explore the underwater world of the Galápagos Islands is to be seized, so several groups of snorkelers made their way to Guy Fawkes, offshore Santa Cruz Island. This semi-eroded tuff cone is a spectacular place, with its colorful underwater wall covered with marine invertebrates, large schools of fish and the occasional playful sea lion.
One of the best things about this expedition is being able to visit two places in one day, so the National Geographic Endeavour weighed anchor and sailed north towards Santiago Island. A busy afternoon awaited us, and the choice of activities was very varied. Some of our guests decided to have a second snorkeling outing today, along the lava coast by Sombrero Chino, where more highlights awaited, like swimming with white-tipped reef sharks and marine iguanas feeding underwater. A more relaxed option was an outing to the little beach of Sombrero Chino, which our guests had to share with a sea lion bull busily patrolling its territory. A last chance for kayaking was also on the list today, although this time it was a bit of a challenge as this was a very windy afternoon.
While all this happened, a small colony of Galápagos penguins made its way home onto the rocky coast of Santiago, to the delight of our Zodiac riders, who were very lucky to witness this from very close. Thanks to today’s clear skies we probably witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets of this week, 600 hundred miles away from South America, in a lost paradise that time has forgotten.
