Galápagos: Day 5

Today was divided between two islands, Santa Cruz and China Man's Hat. At about 01:00 last night we sailed from the southern port of Santa Cruz, to the north. This part of the island isn't populated. We had our earliest wake up of the cruise so far: breakfast at 06:00. Even though it was only an hour before all the other days, it felt so much earlier when I tried to crawl out of bed.

The day started with a walk around Dragon Hill on Santa Cruz. We were on the lookout for the land iguanas. These iguanas proved a lot more difficult to find than the marine iguanas that all clump together at the shore. Not only were the land iguanas good at camouflaging in the dry dirt and brush, but they didn't clump together and were relatively far from the path at times. We did manage to see a handful of them, mostly juvenile males, so they were more black and not the expected tan color we were looking for.

After our walk, we went back to the boat to get ready to snorkel along the shore at Dragon Hill. While snorkeling we saw a lot of the same reef fish we've seen previous days. Today I learned that the orange parrot fish are female and the shiny blue ones are males. It's nice to be able to recognize some of these fish now after doing this for a few days and to still learn new things about them.

When we arrived back at the boat, Rikki, our bartender, was there ready and waiting with a hot drink and snacks just like every other time. I really look forward to the hot drink when we get back from snorkeling. It was after snorkeling we began sailing away from Santa Cruz towards Chinese Hat.

We had a lot more downtime in the middle of our day than previous days. I think because we started an hour earlier, it built more time into the middle because our afternoon activities started around a similar time. We had a bit of time before lunch to leisurely shower and relax and after lunch we got to have a really nice nap. It was borderline too long because I did not want to get back out of bed to go snorkeling again. But, the hope of seeing Galapagos penguins spurred me on.

I somehow managed to get that wet wetsuit back on (struggled), and sleepily made my way back to the dinghy to go snorkeling. While we were heading out to the snorkel spot, we saw 4 penguins so the trip out already seemed worth it. This snorkeling was definitely better than the first. We didn't see any penguins in the water, but we got to go nearer to one at the shore on some rocks. We also saw a TON of white tip reef sharks. There were a couple swimming on the sea floor, but hiding in a lava cave was about 5 all huddled together. That was pretty cool!

The sea lions also came to play with us while we were snorkeling, and sadly one has a plastic bag stuck around its neck. Pablo, our guide, plans to report this to the national park and he said people will come out tomorrow to help it.

Our day still wasn't done! We got back to the boat, quickly had our hot drink, and shower before a short walk on Chinese Hat Island. On the island there was a lot of visible lava, and reminded me a lot of some of the hikes on the big island (Hawaii) with predominantly lava and random spatterings of vegetation mostly near the shoreline.

We saw seals lions and a couple marine iguanas as well as a beautiful sunset. The really special thing we saw, was a newly born baby seal. We must have just missed it giving birth by a few minutes, because a group hiking in front of us didn't see the baby and placenta, but when we arrived shortly behind them, there was a baby and the placenta! The little baby seal was still trying to work out how to move around and the mother was being very attentive, more attentive than I'd seen the mothers be previously probably because this was a fresh baby who didn't have any independence yet at all.

After today, I really feel like we've gotten a full flavor of the Galapagos, and I can't believe we still have another full day to experience everything this beautiful place has to offer. Tomorrow, my goal is to try and see the red footed boobies, and then I would have hit the booby trifecta! Allan hopes to see the hammerhead sharks. That's an animal we've been trying to see while snorkeling since the beginning of the cruise as the hammerhead still evades us. Fingers crossed 🤞Read more