After breakfast we had dry landing on a colorful uplifted island known as South Plaza which is named after an Ecuadorian President.
We hiked along a flat, very arid landscape covered with yellow land iguanas and red succulent Galapagos carpet weed. These reptiles had successfully colonized the islands millions of years ago and now have made South Plaza one of their natural habitats within the archipelago. In the case of the land iguanas, these yellow dragons are the major herbivores on this small uplifted island. This island was uplifted from the bottom of the ocean floor millions of years ago and today serves as the habitat for yellow dragons, finches, cacti, sea lions and a large variety of plants which allows secondary succession to take place.
After an amazing hike, we returned back to the National Geographic Islander and attended a great lecture about fish from the Galapagos.
After lunch, we dropped anchor and got ready to explore the visitor site on Santa Fe Island. While some of our guests went snorkeling, others went kayaking. During the snorkeling outing we spotted many species of fish, diamond sting rays, yellow tailed razor surgeons, spotted eagle rays, white tipped reef sharks and we also saw a couple of Green pacific sea turtles. Along the hike, the highlight was spotting the Santa Fe land iguana. in fact we were lucky enough to spot 6 of these rare species which are only found on this island and nowhere else on the planet. Some cactus finches, mocking birds and many sea lions were part of the fauna of the visitor site.
The Galapagos hawk was soaring in the sky and a large colony of sea lions was resting on a white sandy beach as the sun was slowly going down.
We had an adventurous day with many sightings of endemic species and colorful landscapes.
