Santa Cruz & Chínese Hat
The Galápagos Islands offer many different contrasts of colors and amazing landscapes, depending on where we are. Sometimes those changes occur in less than 50 feet of distance.
We are talking about the Dragon Hill, a place where not many species of animals like to live. This amazing area is dry because is almost at the ocean level.
The land iguanas of the Galápagos are reptiles that were already adapted when they arrived to the archipelago. This means that they had scales that protected against extreme external conditions, such as prolonged sun exposure. So they saved water and depended very little on food because of their low energy consumption.
Unfortunately many individuals starved and died when goats and dogs reached Dragon Hill many years ago. Those animals reduced the population to 70 iguanas, which almost disappeared. Intensive reproduction programs in captivity were the best way to help them, and thanks to the National Park, who did most of the field work, the iguana’s numbers were raised to 800 in the year 2000. Now they are reproducing naturally.
It was hot this morning when we visited the island. The vegetation was almost golden colored, making it difficult to find iguanas; the very few that we saw were already resting under cactus shade and searching for food. One large male, almost a mustard-yellow color, was found in his shelter. The next was a female, also a known resident, which I remember from ten years ago. These creatures are more distributed because they are looking for better feeding areas.
We came back aboard the National Geographic Endeavour for a few minutes, and then we had a Zodiac ride to snorkel in the Guy Fawkes Islets, which are old extinct volcanoes that are quite far offshore, with deep submarine cliffs and rare species of corals.
In the afternoon Chinese Hat, an old extinct volcano, was the best place to rest our minds and to think deeply in nature. It is just a few yards from Santiago Island, with some of the best shallow-water snorkeling in the channel between them. Most of us also got to see a huge manta ray as we returned to the National Geographic Endeavour.
And I almost forgot our kayakers, who had a great time observing penguins and sea lions along the very young lava flows of Santiago. These lava flows are only 150 years old, which in geological time is a fraction of a second. It is very rare to see so many different things in a short distance from one island to another, but as we say here, everything is possible in the Galápagos Islands.
