Barcha Beach
It was another early start today with a 0600 pre-breakfast walk on Barcha, a beach on Santa Cruz where American barges were left to rust. We saw what looked like the remains of a crab but Javier told us that the crab had moulted, leaving its main shell and legs behind!
Further inland, there was a pond with one lone flamingo. We joked that it had been chained there under the water for us.
Waiting for our dinghy back to the Millennium we saw a baby turtle in the water on its first journey into the big wide world.
Text continues after this gallery.
-
- Remains from a moulting crab.
-
- On Barcha.
-
- Flamingo and marine iguana.
-
- Flamingo.
-
- Crab.
-
- Crab.
-
- On Barcha.
-
- Crabs make these balls making their nests in the sand.
The wait
After breakfast at 0830, we headed back to our starting position in Baltra. Javier finished his two-week shift today. There was also a partial crew change.
We remained onboard for a long wait till the early afternoon for the other passengers before we could continue the itinerary. At first we felt a little cheated with such a long day of nothingness but after yesterday’s very packed itinerary, we did appreciate the quiet time for relaxation, writing and photo-editing.
The English duo leaving us chose to pay USD30 for a five minute taxi ride to the airport at 1100 rather than the free public transport around 0900. For me, waiting at the airport would have been better than onboard and the USD30 would have bought a lot of empanadas and teas!
Giovanni served us lunch at 1200 and the new guests arrived earlier expected at 1300 along with our new guide Gandhy Guerrero.
Cerro Dragon
We set off for Cerro Dragon on the north-west side of Santa Cruz, a journey of around 2 hours. We were in the waters off Cerro Dragon around 1530 for a snorkel. Being rather sandy, the waters weren’t the best but I managed to see two turtles, a good-sized parrot fish, few King Angelfish and plenty of small reef fish.
Back on board at 1630, we weren’t allowed our post-snorkel rinse as there wasn’t enough water for us. We had a quick turnaround for our walk on Cerro Dragon at 1700 where we saw the biggest land iguanas we had seen, together with some of their nesting holes. There were also some marine iguanas and hybrid ones which don’t swim. Gandhy also showed us an incense tree which had a beautifully-scented clear sap.
Text continues after this gallery.
-
- Land iguana.
-
- On Cerro Dragon.
-
- Marine iguana.
-
- Land iguanas.
-
- On Cerro Dragon.
-
- Evening sun on Cerro Dragon.
Back on board, we had our best dinner yet. Perhaps it was because we had a new chef, or perhaps it was simply we had more people and they could provide more variety. The Swiss-German family were all vegetarians and the mother Elspeth spoke very good Indonesian for someone who had only spent 6 weeks in that country!
We returned to our starting point for the third night but tonight it wouldn’t be an entire night’s stay there as we would move at 0300.