During the night, we traveled around Santa Cruz to the northwest side of the island to visit Dragon Hill.

At 8am we piled into our respective dinghies and looked forward to a dry landing at the dock. The black lava rocks were quite slippery, but we managed them as gracefully as we could, given this was our first official day. As time went on, we became ‘pros’ at getting on / off these things didn’t we? ;o)

The hideous black creatures are the marine iguanas, and they blended in quite well with the black lava rocks. Historically people thought these creatures were dragons; hence the name “Dragon Hill”.

Their black color serves 2 purposes, it protects the juveniles from their only natural predator, the Galapagos Hawk. Second, their black bodies absorb the heat from the sun’s rays. When it dives for food (depths of 35 feet), it can lose up to 20F and it can take most of the day to get its body temp to 96F. This is the only lizard that can swim.

We toured Dragon Hill for a couple of hours.

We had a brisk walk around the saltwater lagoon where we saw a couple of flamingos feeding.

Being at the equator it was very hot by 9 am!

The group that ‘kept up with the guide’ were introduced to the Galapagos Flycatcher. As soon as people moved on, this wee bird decided he had waited long enough for his dust bath, and proceeded to have it on the path in front of us. It was such a treat to watch this bird 2 feet away from us, not the least bit afraid. Unfortunately the first half of our group was ‘outta sight’ so we had to disturb his bath. Darn!

The yellow flower is Galapagos Cotton.

Our catamaran “Queen Beatriz” is pictured in the bay.

The Blue-footed Boobies bid us farewell as we headed back to the catamaran at ~ 11 am.

We left Santa Cruz island and sailed north west to the tiny islet of Rabida. The photos of the 'red' beach were taken from the boat as we approached prior to dropping the anchor. Once the boat had stopped, we had lunch at ~1 pm. The dark red beach is volcanic in origin. Those sea lions looked like sausages!

Rabida is south of James (Santiago) island and is considered the geographical center of the Galapagos islands.

We had a wet landing on the beach and were greeted by numerous sea lions, most of them were just ‘lying’ around! It was also interesting to see the various cacti and the fact that it would grow just about anywhere!!

After our tour, we had an opportunity to snorkel. I cannot remember what fish I saw because the little Penguin stole the show. The naughty sea lion pestered him and forced him to get off of ‘his rock’. The penguin moved onto the next rock, only to be followed by the sea lion. . The Penguin had enough and hammered the sea lion in self defense! Our guide said that it was rare to have Penguins on this islet. Penguins can out-swim a sea lion any day. Sea lions can swim 25 km/h; whereas the Penguin can swim 40 km/h.