Santa Cruz, Galapagos

Santa Cruz is the most inhabited island of the Galapagos, so our initial thought was that it would be the least desirable. However, it turns out that there is a ton of fun activities to do, so much that we changed our flights to add more days on the island! The thing that made Santa Cruz so nice was that we could do a lot of day trips on our own. For example, walking to Las Grietas for some cliff jumping…

…or Tortuga Bay for some body surfing! Each destination had a well-defined path which made for nice nature walks full of Darwin’s finches and crazy looking cactuses that live on the water’s edge.

Our day trip to the ‘uninhabited’ North Seymour Island turned out to be inhabited by an enormous population of frigate birds, land iguanas, and blue footed boobies! All of which weren’t the slightest afraid of our group walking around their nests. It was a unique experience to get so close to the strange males who puff up their red pelican like throats to attract females.

One of our most memorable snorkels was near the Canal del Amor by Punta Estrada, where we snorkeled for ages with a family of sea lions who were just as curious about us, as we were about them! It was quite the experience to swim so close to creatures twice our size.