South Plazas Island
The Millennium started up around 0300 bound for the South Plazas Island. It interrupted my sleep but only briefly. It was a turbulent ride for most of the way until we reached our destination around 0600 but I slept pretty well considering the engines were right under us. I guess if we had been forward, we would have felt the up/down motion more.
We had breakfast at 0640 before a dry landing. The South Plazas island had good sprinkling of cactus amidst reddish coverage of carpet weed. We saw land iguanas, sea lions and various birds. As the Israeli woman said, things are starting to repeat themselves and we agreed that our 5d/4n cruise was the perfect length; I don’t know how the Brits did two weeks!
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- Sea lion on South Plazas Island.
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- Hybrid iguana (?)
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- Sea lions.
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- Hybrid iguana (?)
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- Carpet weed on South Plazas Island in different hues due to different availability of water.
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- Carpet weed on South Plazas Island in different hues due to different availability of water.
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- Pelican,
Santa Fe
We were back on board at 0900 to set sail for Santa Fe. I took some motion-sickness tablets for this relatively long stretched which saw me get there in good state. After our midday lunch, we had a relatively long rest before our final snorkel around 1430.
The snorkelling trip was very different from previous as we had curious sea lions come up in droves to play with us.
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- Playful sea lions off Santa Fe.
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- Playful sea lions off Santa Fe.
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- Playful sea lions off Santa Fe.
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- Playful sea lions off Santa Fe.
We returned on board after an hour and prepared ourselves for our final hike on Santa Fe. We saw the unique Santa Fe iguana (which wasn’t too different to my untrained eyes). There were plenty of sea lions at the beginning and end of the hike, with very blue-footed boobies in between.
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- Santa Fe.
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- Santa Fe.
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- Sea lions at Santa Fe.
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- Sea lions at Santa Fe.
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- Sea lions at Santa Fe.
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- The Santa Fe igauana is unique and not found on other islands; not yellow or black but grey.
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- The Santa Fe igauana is unique and not found on other islands; not yellow or black but grey.
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- Really blue feet on the middle blue-footed booby.
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- On Santa Fe.
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- Fish flying being chased by a shark or tuna, probably.
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- On Santa Fe.
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- Sea lions at Santa Fe.
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- Our boat, the Millennium in the background.
Final Dinner
Back on board, we had a short rest before an early briefing with a welcome/farewell cocktail compliments of the crew. We were introduced to the crew who had tidied themselves up; the Captain was in full uniform while the others in matching blue company t-shirts and shoes (for a change).
We had our final dinner on board at the usual time of 1900 and set off for San Cristobal soon after, to arrive around midnight allowing some crew to go home to their families. I tried packing for our disembarkation tomorrow but it was too rough. While I had taken another motion-sickness tablet and feeling OK, it was far too choppy to move around and pack or have a shower. I retired around 2030 and slept till the morning.