South Plaza and Santa Fe Islands
Our disembarkation to South Plaza Island was at eight in the morning, a great time for a hike, we explored the whole Island, and since it is very small we could walk all the way around it. The hike took us along the big cliffs of the southern part of the Island, a lot of birds were seen at this area catching the updraft, the red-billed tropicbirds and the Galápagos shearwaters where seen in big numbers. South Plaza is also famous for its large population of land iguanas in proportion to the size of the island. The sun was shining during our walk so we found a lot of land iguanas were very active feeding on the pads and fruits of the prickly pear cactus. After the hike we returned to the ship and had some time for swimming from the ship, and many of our guests jumped off our diving board!
In the afternoon we organized four different activities at Santa Fe Island. The first ones to depart were the deep-water snorkelers followed by the kayakers; the water conditions were just perfect for these two activities in our sheltered bay. Many species of seabirds and a lot of fish were seen, and near the end of our snorkeling we saw green sea turtles and some diamond stingrays.
Shortly afterwards all of our guests returned to the ship to get ready for a hike. Those going for a long hike left first followed by the short-trail hikers. The highlights were the great amount of sea lions, and the endemic land iguana, found only on Santa Fe — we also could see some endemic rice rats, which happen to be one of the two endemic land mammals of the archipelago!
