South Plaza Island, Galápagos, Ecuador
What a lovely way to announce the day is piped pan music at 6.30 am as our wake up call. I was awake anyway having heard at 3 am the anchors being brought on board as we relocated to South Plaza Is just several hours away.
Breakfast at 7 am and by 7.45 am away by 2 zodiacs for a dry landing. This pm will be a wet landing.
South Plaza Island is only 600 x 100 metres though it felt much bigger than this.
Our passage way to the island on the stone dock was blocked by some sea lions.
Everywhere one looked you had to carefully see the wildlife most of whom were carefully camouflaged into the rocks and also was home on this tiny island. It was also a temporary home to the organised small groups of visitors carefully controlled by the National Park authorities so that the various landings were set apart.
Sea lions, land (black) and marine iguanas of different colours, endemic plants, beautiful landscapes is what these pictures will show. shearwater birds soaring above the cliffs, nazca booby (white), Darwin finch and plenty of Swallow tailed gulls (white bird) withe a red ring around their eyes. These birds are able to follow ships at night attracted by the ships lights.
The picture of what appears to be a red backed iguana is of the blood having just giving birth overnight. They were so unaffected by us humans. We could walk right up to them and they would not scatter away. Staying on the marked trail was so easy as no need to wander to find the wildlife, they would find us or be in our way. This island has one of the largest golden coloured land iguanas population. They were everywhere and proved to be one of my top two favourite islands.
Two hours was not enough and after side stepping the sea lions on the dock again, we had to leave and cruised for 2 hours to reach Sante Fe Island (also known as Barrington).
Photos still to be edited, labelled and re-ordered.
Pre-historic iguanas
Thursday, December 29, 2011
South Plaza Island, Galápagos, Ecuador
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