Santa Fé

The wet landing site on Santa Fé is a white, sandy beach, full of sea-lions. We then did a loop walk to another beach, which in fact is only separated from our landing beach by a small promontory. Both beaches have resident sea-lions, and we spent a long time watching their behaviour. The landing beach had two beach-masters: Monica told us that the bull sea-lions control only an area of beach: the females are free to come and go - the beachmaster does not control the females at all.

This young sea-lion had a large injury on its rump: Monica said it was probably a shark attack, and was confident that it would recover.

As usual, the Galápagos Mockingbirds are curious and totally tame: here Judy has a close encounter with a mockingbird on the national park monument.

Our main aim in visiting the island of Santa Fé was to look for the endemic full species, the Santa Fé Land Iguana, Conolphus pallidus, which is confined to this small island.

We were lucky enough to find four individuals; this photo shows Rose, Dick and Martha photographing one of them.

The Santa Fé Land Iguana differs from the Land Iguana, Conolphus subcristatus by having a more extensive row of spines along its back.
Here Peter is photographing another individual.

Monica observed that the Santa Fé Land Iguana also has a wider smile. I noticed that the males we saw all had redder eyes than the other species: the Field Guide suggests that this isn't always the case.

The landing on Santa Fé was the last one of our trip, so it was a good time to photograph the WildWings group leader, Dick Filby, and our official Galápagos guide, Monica Plaza.
They are standing under two of the Santa Fé Giant Prickly Pear 'trees': these are plants with a very interesting ecology.