Nathan's Insights

Tuesday 17 December 2024
Highlights: Hiking on Santa Fe Island, Kayaking, Snorkelling with Sea Lions, Hiking on South Plazas Island

A massive day ahead meant excited people for breakfast. Today we are visiting two islands. The first was Santa Fe Island which we arrived at around 4 am. I noticed my Fitbit doesn’t think I’m sleeping as I’m moving during the night, or more accurately the catamaran is rocking.

Our first activity was a hike on Santa Fe Island. This required a wet landing, so no shoes until after you get onto the beach. This hike was classified as medium difficulty.

The highlight of this Island was the cactuses and how they have evolved. Omar explained how evolution is so different on the different islands. On Santa Fe, which lacks vegetation, the tortoises and lizards would eat the cactuses so they had to grow tall to survive.

After our hike, we boarded the Zodiac to move into the bay and moved on to kayaks. Getting onto kayaks already on the water is no easy task. Erin was a natural as we navigated the bay. One new animal today was small sharks, no danger to us but a reminder that the sea has predators as well. 

I somehow managed not to fall into the water when moving from the small kayak to the Zodiac. Maybe I lost some dignity but not as much if I fell in.

Once back on board our ship we quickly changed into our wet suits for our snorkelling. We again explored the Santa Fe Island bay but this time under the water.

We had some Sea Lions swimming between us at one point.

I also managed to see a stingray along with many different and colourful fish.

That was our morning, very active and exhausting but worth it.

In the afternoon our ship moved to South Plazas Island. We undertook a ‘medium’ difficulty hike this time. Lizards, Sea Lions, Birds and Cactuses were the focus of this longer hike.

For the nightly briefing to learn about tomorrow’s activities, we watched two videos about snakes and finch birds. The finch birds study showed our 1 species evolved into 13 separate species and why this occurred. This highlighted why the Galapagos was so critical to understanding evolution.