Santa Cruz & Chinese Hat
In the night we sailed from the south of Santa Cruz Island to its northwest side to visit Cerro Dragon. As we disembarked at 6:30 for an early walk we were surrounded by pelicans and blue footed boobies that looked like they were killing themselves diving right into the hull of the National Geographic Endeavour. The reality is that there was a huge school of fish just underneath the ship and they were fishing them. Quite a show!
Our walk took us to a beautifully green area surrounded by some giant cactus and cotton flowers in bloom, this was the area where we were likely to encounter the land iguanas and we did! We saw about six of them and were really glad that the vegetation was that dense because this forced them to lay right in the middle of the trail to catch up some morning sun. All this worked out to our great advantage, since we were keen on taking some really good close-up shots.
Back on board, we had some breakfast and then got ready for a snorkeling adventure along the steep cliffs of Guy Fawkes Islet. Tons of colorful fish as well as a couple of sea lions made us quite happy.
In the afternoon, we headed off for a second snorkel in a much shallower area with brilliant turquoise waters, where we encountered another countless variety of tropical fish, for example the blue chin parrot fish, slender eel-looking cornet fish or beautiful little damselfish with a turquoise eye. We were also quite surprised to be swimming next to a couple of penguins as well as some white-tip reef sharks that couldn’t care less about our presence in their environment.
The day finished with a Zodiac ride along the black lava coast that is actually home to a small penguin colony as well as a few sea lions.
