Mr. Bichler: Galapagos Adventure (Santa Cruz, El Eden & Daphne Islands)~Wednesday, Nov. 23-Day 5

Today breakfast was served earlier than usual, 0630-0730 as we are scheduled for a "long hike at a fast pace". Our ship moved again early this morning but we are now anchored along the pristine, arid north-western coast of Santa Cruz Island. We will be hiking Cerro Dragon which translates to "Dragon Hill' where we will search for the land iguanas. Feral dogs nearly wiped out the population of land iguanas in the 1960's but with captive and semi-captive breeding programs and the elimination of the feral dogs the population has been on the increase. At 0730 we disembarked for a dry landing at Cerro Dragon.

The wetland near our landing site offered some great early morning photos.

Black-necked Stilt

We saw more burrows than land iguanas

But the two we saw were pretty massive

Our naturalist this morning was Emma, one of my favorites.

Sally Lightfoot Crab

Luke found this baby puffer fish in a tidal pool. Can you see it?

Waiting for our zodiac

Luke took some great photos on this hike. My favorite is his flamingo shot.

At 1015 hours we donned our wet suits and headed to Guy Fawkes Islets for a deep water snorkel. The water has been cold each time we have snorkeled but today it seemed more frigid than the other times. It literally took our breath away when we jumped into the water. To make matters worse, the visibility was poor and the site where we started was very deep with a strong current and not much to see. By the time we reached the calmer side of the islet we were so tired and cold that we signaled our zodiac and got out to warm up.

It even looks cold in this photo!!

There was one playful sea lion and we did see a lone Galapagos penguin before we entered the water

Lunch today was a special Ecuadorian Buffet and Captain Patricio Jaramillo ate with us and explained many of the dishes we were eating. Luke especially enjoyed the different corn nuts. I never took pictures of our food, I guess I was too hungry and never thought about it until now. After lunch the Young Explorers painted hats with Enrique and at 1430 hours they got to learn to drive one of the zodiacs. I didn't go with Luke so I didn't get any pics but all of the kids had a great time and on the last evening they were presented with a Zodiac drivers license. This was also the evening that the kids had pizza and movie night. Luke said the pizza was worse than Grotto's pizza.

While Luke was learning to drive a zodiac, I was exploring the shoreline by zodiac.

Tonight at 1745 hours there was a wine tasting on the outer deck as we circumnavigated Daphne Major. At one point we were joined by a pod of bottle nose dolphins. What a beautiful evening!