March 18, 2011 – Puerto Egas, Santiago Island and Dragon Hill, Santa Cruz
Today’s morning excursion was a visit to Puerto Egas on Santiago Island. This excursion was a walk along the beach to view various birds and reptiles. This walk included one of the highlights of our trip; a visit from the curious Galapagos flycatcher. The Galapagos flycatcher is a small finch looking bird that is very curious and absolutely not shy. While walking along the trail, one of these birds landed on a bush next to the trail. A person in the group raised their camera to take a picture of it. The bird immediately flew toward the lense. I guess the flycatchers are attracted to the large lenses on the large SLR cameras. I got some great pictures of the little guy flying at and landing on people’s cameras. Definitely a cool experience. Other wildlife seen during this excursion were more sea lions, a gold crown heron, an oyster catcher and many marine iguanas laying out in the sun.
At the end of the walk, we had another chance to snorkel. Britt gave it a go one more time to get a chance to swim with sea lions and turtles. Britt did great and got to see a sea lion swim by us. Unfortunately, he didn’t stick around long enough to hang out with us. We also saw a white tipped reef shark while swimming that was about three feet long. As usual, we saw thousands of tropical fish swimming around. Britt had enough after about 30 minutes, so I went back out alone. I was glad that I went back out again because I had a personal experience with a sea lion. The sea lion and I swam along together for several minutes with the sea lion coming up to look at my goggles several times. It was just like I was another sea lion swimming along with it. Awesome!
For the afternoon excursion, we took a trip to Dragon Hill on Santa Cruz Island. We were on the lookout for land iguanas and flamingos on this excursion. Britt wasn’t feeling well due to a binge eating session at the Mexican lunch buffet. She should have knew better, but just couldn’t resist that last taco. She took the short route option and I took the long walk option. We both made a stop at a brackish lagoon in search for flamingos. Luckily, one flamingo stayed around for us to gawk at. Britt and I then went our separate ways. My trek took me through some very muddy and rocky paths. It took awhile, but we finally came upon a very large male land iguana. Land iguanas are different from their marine iguana brother and sisters. They only stay inland and feed on plants. They are yellow and brown in color and grow slightly larger than the marine iguanas. At the end of this excursion, I took the final snorkel opportunity in hopes to swim with some more sea lions and turtles. Unfortunately, the water was very choppy and the snorkeling was poor, so I went back to the ship with Britt.
*We borrowed a movie from their collection tonight. Top Gun. Neither of us had seen the movie all the way through, especially since it came out when we were 3 and 4 years old respectively. We didn’t quite understand what was so special about this movie-did people only enjoy it because they saw Tom Cruise with his shirt off?
March 19-Santa Cruz, Puerto Ayorta
Today marks the final day of excursions for our trip. Our first stop was at the Darwin Research Center. We roamed around the center and saw the baby tortoises, some that were two years old and still caged up. We were then on our way to visit Lonesome George, the last of a specific tortoise species. He was recently divorced from two girls who he was not interested in. Two other females were brought in during December in hopes of making baby George’s. These two females have DNA which more closely resemble his DNA. We then met Diego who has helped produce over 2,000 tortoise babies. Good thing he doesn’t have to pay child support or buy them Birthday presents!
When we were finished at the research center, Ted and I walked by stopping at various shops along the way looking at junk. We managed to walk away with a magnet, our typical vacation purchase.
This afternoon’s excursion took us on a 30 minute bus ride to Santa Cruz island. Our visit was to a private farm to view the wild tortoises. As it is currently mating season we were told we may have difficulties in finding any tortoises. But, we were in luck as our walk allowed us to see 10 tortoises. We also made a stop to view turtle shells. Our guide, Alvaro tried convincing a few folks to crawl in, but Ted was the only brave volunteer. I can’t wait to post pictures of this great spectacle;-)
Well, this about wraps up on time blogging. As I mentioned before, we will post pictures when we have a better internet connection. Adios amigos!
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