Day 15 - South Plaza Island/Punta Carrion
Today we took a one hour boat ride to South Plaza Island. This island is small in size, but big on flora and fauna.
Port Baltra where we got onto the Santa Fe for the days adventure.
We were greeted by sea lions sunning themselves on the rocks as we approached.
The most notable thing is the rich ground cover throughout the island. The Sesuvium plant is a ground cover that changes its leves to bright red, orange and yellow colors during the dry season. It is just like being back in Michigan in the fall!
Sevuvium covering the ground in full color!
There were also prickly pear cacti everywhere. In 1981, rats infested the island and ate the roots of the prickly pear cacti and killed most of them. The rats have since been eradicated and new cacti have been planted.
Prickly pear cactus planted.
Iguanas
Iguanas could be found everywhere. They can be very territorial as we had witnessed one chasing another out of his “area”.
Lava Lizard
The most abundant reptile found across Galapagos, lava lizards are a friendly sight at almost all of the tourist sites. They are often seen having press-up contests to find out which lizard is king!
Our naturalist guides took us on a hike to the end of the island. We saw many birds, lava lizards and iguanas. The tail led to rocky cliff where more sea lions were sunning themselves.
Trail to the rocky cliffs.
We had lunch on the boat, then motored onto Punta Carrion. Here we had the option to deep water snorkel (which means we entered the water from the zodiac as opposed to the beach snorkel we did yesterday. There was a small cove where the waters were calm and you could see many fish including white tipped sharks.
An early return to the hotel gave us an opportunity to explore the grounds of the hotel and just relax. The mist and clouds that covered the highlands where the hotel is located finally cleared a bit today. We finally got a glimpse of our view from our villa.
For dinner tonight, we went to a restaurant located in a lava tube called the Lava Cafe. The dining area was set up on a platform that had light shining up from the floor. There was also a ceiling installed to keep water and things from dropping on our table. They even had a fog machine to add to th e atmosphere!
Lava Cafe
We were served a five course meal of Ecuadorian foods (locally sourced) paired with Ecuadorian wine. The wines we had were from a winery called Armenia, which is Spanish for “harmony”. The food was delishous and paired very well with the wines. It was a great experience to dine in a cave and have such good food!
Margie’s birthday!
The restaurant even had a surprise birthday cake for Margie.
