Dat 12 - Santa Fe, Cerro Brujo & San Cristobel Islands

Early this morning, we did a wet landing at the beach of Santa Fe.  We had a great (though short, in distance) hike with Javier.  We spotted quite a few dead looking sea lions who were just beached and napping in random spots along the sandy path.  There were really cool cacti on this walk and a bunch of different species of land iguanas.

Later in the morning, we did another deep water snorkeling session.  This one was pretty different than the previous two.  We swam along a lava rock shore (there really isn't any coral in Galapagos - the water is too cold usually) and swam next to a huge male sea lion (known as the beach master) swimming back and forth up the water's edge, keeping an eye out on the flock (school?  gathering? murder??).

We saw a marine iguana feeding underwater on plants, attached to rocks with their purpose-evolved claws.  A sea lion started teasing it and biting its tail.  It took off out of the water which garnered it even more attention - now three young sea lions were teasing it.  They didn't managed to get any iguana meet before the black and red mini-dinosaur got away and scurried into the rocks on shore.

We swam away from the rock edge to a large sandy bottom area where we hovered over sting rays and sea turtles.  The turtles had different designs and colours.  One of the guides said that the darker ones were more likely from around there, but that the ones that had gold, spiderwebbed designs on their backs were likelier from far in the pacific.  Crazy.

After lunch we got some good chill time for reading and sleeping.  Mid afternoon we did a wet landing on a beautiful fine white sandy beach called Cerro Brujo.  There were tons of sea lions and marine iguanas that posed lazily for pictures.  We swam that last half hour, knowing that this was likely our last time swimming in the waters of the Galapagos.

There was lots of  talks going on about the next day's logistics in the afternoon.  It was kind of depressing but, granted, completely necessary.  Their communication and expectation setting has been exceptional.

As the sun set, we had drinks and appetizers on the upper deck while we circumnavigated an small island called Leon Dormido.  That was followed by a slideshow presentation by Jose of pictures that he had taken over the last week and pictures that were submitted by guests.  I don't think a ton of people submitted pictures, as the slide show had a lot of selfies of the Asian family of four from California.

We had a really nice last dinner with Robin, Bill, Dave and Lisa.