Santa Cruz & Sombrero Chino Islands
The night before last we navigated to the northern side of Santa Cruz, which is also the leeward side of the island and anchored in front of a place called “Dragon Hill”. All of us were ready to disembark early to try to find the land iguanas in the wild, and indeed, we saw a good number of them walking through the cacti forest.
A few weeks ago the panorama here was very desertic and almost every land iguana took a cactus as a protection for shade and food supply for the next months. Today the story in this place has changed; it seems like we have had some rains in the last days and all the plants have started to bloom, the seeds have started to open, and now the panorama in this place is nice and green. That is what all these reptiles were waiting for: water.
This situation will remain for few months and then the drought will come again until next December. Only the most adapted will survive and evolve, that is the law of life. Our biggest thrill however, occurred when someone spotted something none of us had ever seen before in this location: a Galápagos giant tortoise among the land iguanas! Santa Cruz has its own race of tortoise, but their range does not normally extend so far over to the northwest, so we were all caught by surprise – a wonderful surprise! Once again we were prepared, in the right place, at the right time, with the right equipment, to photograph and catch on film this extremely rare occurrence!
In the afternoon we visited a totally different place, a young volcano that by its shape looks like a Chinese hat, and so we call the island, “Sombrero Chino”. This place has a unique underwater panorama. We took our snorkels and jumped into the turquoise and warm waters and there we saw numerous tropical fish, but also a fish by now common for our guests, the white tip reef shark. Some penguins decorated the panorama by swimming and fishing close to us, and so we had a great time snorkeling with them.
After this activity, we used the last rays of the sunset for a Zodiac ride to see the other young volcanoes nearby where we saw many different birds and marine iguanas. However, as always, the sea lions took the show and started to jump right beside us. Our guests will remember this day for long time as the day we snorkeled around the volcano of Sombrero Chino.
The night before last we navigated to the northern side of Santa Cruz, which is also the leeward side of the island and anchored in front of a place called “Dragon Hill”. All of us were ready to disembark early to try to find the land iguanas in the wild, and indeed, we saw a good number of them walking through the cacti forest.
A few weeks ago the panorama here was very desertic and almost every land iguana took a cactus as a protection for shade and food supply for the next months. Today the story in this place has changed; it seems like we have had some rains in the last days and all the plants have started to bloom, the seeds have started to open, and now the panorama in this place is nice and green. That is what all these reptiles were waiting for: water.
This situation will remain for few months and then the drought will come again until next December. Only the most adapted will survive and evolve, that is the law of life. Our biggest thrill however, occurred when someone spotted something none of us had ever seen before in this location: a Galápagos giant tortoise among the land iguanas! Santa Cruz has its own race of tortoise, but their range does not normally extend so far over to the northwest, so we were all caught by surprise – a wonderful surprise! Once again we were prepared, in the right place, at the right time, with the right equipment, to photograph and catch on film this extremely rare occurrence!
In the afternoon we visited a totally different place, a young volcano that by its shape looks like a Chinese hat, and so we call the island, “Sombrero Chino”. This place has a unique underwater panorama. We took our snorkels and jumped into the turquoise and warm waters and there we saw numerous tropical fish, but also a fish by now common for our guests, the white tip reef shark. Some penguins decorated the panorama by swimming and fishing close to us, and so we had a great time snorkeling with them.
After this activity, we used the last rays of the sunset for a Zodiac ride to see the other young volcanoes nearby where we saw many different birds and marine iguanas. However, as always, the sea lions took the show and started to jump right beside us. Our guests will remember this day for long time as the day we snorkeled around the volcano of Sombrero Chino.
