Accommodation: Samba

Our fifth day began a little later than usual. Instead of our ‘normal’ 6:00am breakfast bell wakeup call, we began the day at a respectable 9am as the activities planned were a little on the lighter side. Today we disembarked the Samba for the island of Santa Fe, an extinct volcano with extraordinary inhabitants. Here lives the Barrington terrestrial iguana that looks like something that crawled out of the Jurassic era. Throughout our travels within the archipelago, we’ve ran into a number of land and marine iguanas, but the Barrington iguanas are by far the largest. Their sandy color makes perfect camouflage as they blend in so well with the environment, that a few members of our group nearly stepped on them along the hike. What is even more interesting, is that once fully grown, the iguanas have no natural predators on this island, so they thrive as long as their food supply holds out.

Speaking of their food supply, towering over the landscape are giant prickly pear cactus that can grow over 15 feet tall and live for well over 200 years and the iguanas eat exclusively.  They wait until a suspect tree until one of the branches fall down and tear into it with their razor sharp claws.

As we headed back to the Samba after our morning hike, we got a great glimpse of the incredible view of Barrington Bay, basked in mid morning daylight turning the water into a beautiful turquoise.

The crew tethered the kayaks in preparation for a late morning expedition that involved us transversing the bay, through the open sea and along the coast of Santa Fe….in shark invested waters. Prior to plunging in our kayaks, our guide informed us that a mere month ago, a tourist was attacked by an old Galapagos Shark in this very bay and the national park is not allowing anybody to snorkel here until the shark was tagged and tracked. I’m happy to report that no-one on our boat ran into the shark even though I made every attempt by accidentally capsizing my kayak.

The latter portion of day 5 continued with a short navigation to South Plaza located on Santa Cruz. Here we ran into the same prickly pear cactus with iguanas all around. We also stumbled upon a cliff on the south side, home to a number of native birds such as the lava heron and a gull or two.

Our evening ended with a late navigation to our next destination, Santiago and we were lucky enough to enjoy a beautiful sunset along the way (seriously, there is ALWAYS a beautiful sunset in the galapagos!)

Featured Image: The epitome of the Galapagos, a sea lion sleeping on a buoy. Seen on our way from Santa Fe to Santiago