Galapagos Day 4: Climbing Dragon Hill, Flamingo Ponds, Red Sand Beaches and Snorkeling

 

Dragon Hill in the background of another beautiful Galapagos Island landscape

Today was a big day on our exploration of the Galapagos Archipelago. We crammed three different adventures into our day, with a hike and a snorkel on Rabida Island in the morning, and a hike to Dragon Hill on Santa Cruz Island in the afternoon.

The landscapes were stunning, and the snorkel was super fun. I spent most of the time underwater, freediving with sea lions, big schools of fish, and an elusive nurse shark. And it all started off with a bang as our zodiacs took us in for a shore landing on the most beautiful red sand beach.

Beautiful red sand beach

Another shot of the red sand next to the green bushes.

Beautiful cliff view from our Hike

Not only did we get a scenic hike in on the lava rock coastline, but there was a pond full of pink flamingos just inland from the red sand beach. We spent a while just watching the flamingos feeding in the shallow water. I think a lot of the guests onboard were surprised that there were flamingos here in the islands.

Who knew that there were flamingos in the Galapagos!?

Next we donned our snorkel mask and fins and jumped in for a drift snorkel a little farther down the coast. We had beautiful conditions and we stayed in for over an hour. There was just so much to look at. Huge school of tiny pink fish, and schools of beautiful King Angelfish, a few curious sea lions, and a shark all made appearances as we drifted along the coast.

I had a close encounter with a few sea lions farther down the coast of Rabida Island.

Very close encounter

Itinerary

This is what we do in between activities.

Calm beach landing for our Dragon Hill hike.

Over lunch we transited south to the island of Santa Cruz. We stopped at a place called Dragon Hill on the northwest corner of the island. This was a fun leg stretcher as we went through some pretty dense low lying forest on our way to the summit of Dragon Hill. The sunset colors on the way back provided some beautiful landscape photography opportunities.

Pretty cool landscapes on our way

The long rainy season has left some puddles to walk around. I do enjoy the reflections in the water for shots like this.

Dragon Hill in sunset colors. This was a pretty easy jaunt through dense bushes and more land iguanas.

I am getting in the groove of this expedition cruising from the guest-side of things. Usually I am running these trips in other locations of the world, but here I am just a guest ambassador, joining the guests and spreading the hype. I am just glad to be visiting a new place that is living up to the hype.