13th November – Santa Fe & South Plaza.

We had a wet landing this morning on to what looked like a pristine white sandy beach on Santa Fe with sea lions scattered around us.  What you can’t see or smell from a distance is all the poop everywhere, and as it stinks so much you really don’t want any sticking to your shoes.  We were warned that it was a very difficult walk, but as it turned out, it was quite easy  - you just had to watch your step as the ground was quite uneven.

Triffid-like prickly pears

We walked up a short slope onto the cliff edge which was lined with enormous, tall and very old Opuntia (or prickly pear) plants.  They almost looked triffid like.  Lola pointed out a couple of the land iguanas which are much lighter coloured here to blend in with the local rock, which when weathered turns a lightish yellow colour.  The lava lizards were also patterned differently.

We also enjoyed watching a pair of blue footed boobies flying together and then doing their death defying dives into the sea hunting for fish.

The walk ended up on another beach also littered with sea lions.  We even saw a very young pup, which still had the remnants of its umbilical cord attached, bonding with his mother and crying out for milk. 

Blue footed booby

We also saw a laughing gull, which is a migratory bird from northern America.  We then caught the panga back to the boat and then embarked on the next activity.  Chris chose to go snorkelling and got some stonking pictures and video of a ray plus some nice photos of some of the fish.  Compared to most other people, we are incredibly low tech and don’t have the fancy underwater cameras (GoPro - cw) that most of them do.

I chose to go on the glass bottomed boat with Mum.  We were pangaed out there and then had to do a slightly hair raising transfer over to it.  We saw lots of lovely fish and even a sea lion passed under the boat.  Unfortunately though, it wasn’t long before I started to feel sea sick so had to spend the rest of the time deep breathing and concentrating on looking at the horizon.  We got back to La Pinta just in time for me to make it to the privacy our own bathroom before retching in the loo.  I really am a terrible sailor!

We passed up the talk on Charles Darwin this afternoon.  Our final walk was around South Plaza Island, which Chris and I thought looked rather Martian as it had a lot of ground succulents growing on it which were very stressed so had turned bright red in colour.  There were also large prickly pear trees but no young ones due to the pressure of too many iguanas due to man killing Galapagos Hawks on Santa Fe as they think they’re the same as raptors on the mainland and eat chickens etc..  Here, the land iguanas were smaller than elsewhere and also cross bred with the marine iguanas which resulted in a rather strange looking but infertile hybrid.

As we landed, we had to walk through a colony of nesting swallow tailed seagulls, which have evolved to be nocturnal due to the pressure of all the frigate birds.  I think they are very handsome birds although some of the babies are rather ugly.

Red billed tropic bird

We crossed the island to a steep cliff edge where we enjoyed watching the varied sea birds flying below us.  I spent ages trying to get a good photo of the red billed tropic bird, which was very difficult as they flew so fast.  However, my perseverance paid off eventually.....

All along the cliff edge, various sea birds could be seen interspersed with sea lions of various ages.  We then crossed the island to the lower area where we witnessed a large bull sea lion ushering some of his harem up on to dry land.  As we slowly wandered back to meet our panga we were all just amazed by all of the sea lion and sea bird activity – we’re very lucky as there are a of young animals and birds around at the moment.

We then transferred back to La Pinta where we’ve just enjoyed a cocktail on the top deck. Next we have a presentation and slide show of our week here and the Captain’s farewell cocktail party.....