One of the first things we saw wasn't what we thought. I was taking photos of this pelican in the distance, when something started playing around in the water. We thought it was a dolphin (they love to jump around), but upon further review of my photos, it turned out to be a sea lion jumping around and splashing. Cool to watch for a while.
Here's a closer shot of that pelican.
Sometimes there are interesting things right under foot.
In Galapagos, you quickly learn to watch where you walk since a lot of animals, particularly iguanas, don't move when they see humans. You never know when you're going to step on a tail or whatever.
Like many of the other islands, San Salvador had its own variety of marine iguanas. Since the morning was overcast and a bit windy, the iguanas weren't very active. They prefer warmer weather and will pile up on each other in order to maintain their body heat. I did get an opportunity to catch some close-up video of one swimming in a tide pool, however, and that was pretty cool. Watch how he uses his tail.
There were a lot of different kinds of birds fishing or just hanging out on the rocks. This was one of my favorite things about the islands, in general. The majority of the wildlife wasn't territorial in any way, which meant that you'd see different species doing their own thing in close proximity to other species.
No visit to an island in the Galapagos would be complete without the requisite sea lion shots.
Crabs tend to be abundant in tide pools and on the rocks in many places in the islands. They're typically not very active, but I liked taking photos of them because of their brilliant colors.
One of my favorite birds in the islands was the Galapagos hawk. We saw a few of them hanging out on the rocks. They're also not typically very active. They typically look like they're watching and waiting for the right meal to come along. I wish I had video of this, but there were marine iguanas hanging out on the rocks about 15-20' above the water. An iguana saw a hawk flying overhead and thought it was going to be attacked, and in scrambling to move to a safer location, it slipped and fell all the way down into the water. That was pretty entertaining to see.
San Salvador was the first time I saw a fur seal. When you see them, you notice right away that they're quite a bit different than the typical sea lions you see due to their color and due to their heavy fur. Apparently their fur is a result of their habitat, which stretches as far north as California, and thus into colder waters.
I mentioned that I didn't get any video of the iguana falling the water, but I did catch this green sea turtle swimming in that very same water below. This water is actually inside a lava tube that had its roof cave in so that it looked like an open tunnel. There were places where the roof hadn't collapsed, so we were able to cross these "bridges" in the tubes to walk around and such.
In the afternoon, we visited the area around Dragon Hill, a different part of Santa Cruz island. You'll notice from the photos how different the terrain is from San Salvador. It had been overcast and a bit wetter/greener on San Salvador. The around around Dragon Hill was hot and dry, with lots of brush.
Dragon Hill, as seen from the shore.
Wildlife-wise, Dragon Hill was a bit of a bust. We were supposed to see flamingos, but none were to be seen. Most of what we saw was iguanas, both land and marine. The marine iguanas like to hang out in the brackish ponds near the shore, while the land iguanas favor areas with brush and shade.
A brackish pond.
We also saw a few birds in the area. I happened to catch this egret wandering around in the distance. Kind of unusual to see a bright, white bird in all that brush.
Typical terrain around Dragon Hill.
Dragon Hill wasn't what we thought it would be, wildlife-wise, but I did enjoy hiking around and seeing some different terrain away from the coast. Most of our excursions focused heavily on what you would find in and around the water, so it was nice to see something different, even if it meant that we weren't up to our eyeballs in animals.
Be sure to check out my previous Ecuador/Galapagos entries if you haven't already.
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