Early morning National Geographic Endeavour II arrived at the northern coast of Santa Cruz Island. Today we explored a small site known as Cerro Dragon, here we looked for Galapagos land iguanas.
As soon as we landed, a male marine iguana that was sunbathing greeted us, next to him, a small female was resting. As we passed next to this couple, the male started to do a subtle movement with the head, this was done to impress the female.
The trail was lined up with some giant prickly pear cacti, some of these trees like cactus had some impressive long prickles and next to some of these, we spotted Galapagos land iguanas. This species of reptile has bright yellow color especially on the males, as the females tend to be less colorful and smaller.
This morning we also saw far at the distance a great blue heron looking for food by the coast, some of its favorite food includes sally light-foot crabs, fish, insects, baby sea turtles and juvenile marine iguanas.
After the walk on Cerro Dragon, we returned aboard and got ready to snorkel from the Zodiacs around the cliffs of Guy Fawkes Islet; there our guests encountered different species of fish and marine invertebrates.
At the end of the morning we returned on board and navigated towards Eden Islet; there our kayaks and paddleboards were deployed and while some of our guests went on them, others went by Zodiac to the same area and observed sea turtles, sea lions, pelicans, and Galapagos marine iguanas.
We had great weather conditions, and after everybody returned aboard, our ship was repositioned and headed towards Daphne major islet, there we looked at a colony of Nazca boobies, blue-footed boobies, and sea lions from the ship. We ended our day with a striking view of Daphne Islet.
