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Chino Sombrero Island and Dragon Hill, Santa Cruz, Wednesday, November 9



The Galapagos trip ended up being a saga rather than a post.  For links to the whole trip please go to the first Galapagos post.

I have such strong memories, but attaching each memory to an island is difficult. The fact that I am time spacy did not make sorting all of this into order for the blog any easier.  So much was packed into so little time.
I am getting my stride a bit at handling the photos.  There are so many, and I have to decrease the size because of upload limitations.  As always, these are all  my photos unless otherwise noted. You can view them all as a slideshow by clicking on any of them.
I am still having problems with the Blog software. Getting the photos to go where I want them to go is still eluding me. I have decided to use captions on each photo rather than doing a narrative. 

Sombrero Chino Island (Chinese Hat Island) was about baby sealions and salt. 
And something so special happened that I posted it in a whole separate page. Please if you go to no other post in this series go to that one. And this was the best thing on this trip.
Dragon Hill on Santa Cruz had a few surprises up its sleeve as well. I really did not expect to see flamingos. 

Dedication of this page to Lady Eddie who showed me really cool salt, and Mari the vet.



White coral, black lava

Can you spot the sealion?





Salt
Salt

Salt was once a major source
of income for the galapagos





 

Eroded lava tubes make lovely arches



This stuff is a lot like pickle weed.



It grows in the rocks and sand, salty areas.

The red color is an adaptation for sun protection.


Can you find the baby?


Baby sealions are a barrel of monkeys

    

Mama with a new baby.
They will spend the first few days together
then the mama needs to go off and feed,
leaving the pup on its own.




















This is the point in the narrative where the very special thing happens. Please jump over there to see. 



The males will be territorial about an area.
He doesn't care so much about the females
other than he will mate is one is available

He pretty muchly ignores the pups as well.
But if a predator enters his area, all the 
babies will leave the water.


Snorkel, lunch, then on to Dragon Hill. Here is . one of Lulu's video of our dives.  Sharks.  They were really cute.




This is where we made what is called a dry landing.
The panga noses up to those rocks.  We make a leap onto the broken lava
then pick our way over to the sand.



  




These red crabs are everywhere.  
A major part of the food chain here.







I never managed to get a good shot of them
but there are flamingos

flamingos


There are occasionally briny lakes. 
They come and go depending on the 
rainfall and the tides
At this point the fact that
we had the luxury of two guides
saved me.
One group went up there, and 
some of us got to spend time
strolling back to the beach and landing.

Prickly pears

Prickly pear flower



This is not an especially cool video, but at the end there are rocks that sing.  The only other time I have seen this is on the beach at Monterey. The wave has to come from the right direction.  I had to wait until all the folk with conversation had walked away, then I got rushed because it was time to load on the panga.




Marine iguana on the beach

These linear plants are
morning glory.  





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