Santa Fe Island – The Morning - Jeff & Cynthia Travel The World

Today, we start out on Santa Fe Island, then move on to South Plaza Island.

The morning kicked off with a hike on Santa Fe, followed by a snorkel. But first, as usual, I was awake before the other passengers (and Jeff). So, I was up at the bar area doing my thing, and I saw a really neat sunrise with sunbeams shooting down from the clouds. This isn’t the best picture, but it shows how, somehow, the iPhone 17Pro camera is showing the beams, which looks really cool. It was a super bright orange, as you can see…

Anyway, the morning was beautiful. We gathered for our dinghy ride to Santa Fe Island. We had a great walk there, with lots of scenery and sea lions – and babies!

To kick off the pictures, here’s a cute baby posing.

Here’s a mom in the surf. She just hung out there for a while, calling every so often.

Finally, here is a picture of a male. I assume he was the dominant male, but I don’t know for certain. You can tell he is a male by the big bump on his head compared to the sleek females. Of course, he also looks a lot bigger!

We took a walk around the island. The trail was very rocky, as you can see below. There were a good number of the tree cactus that I told you about previously. And, there were occasional sea lions lounging on the trail! It’s amazing that they are way up here. Look at how they had to climb up a lot of rocky incline to get there! 😮

The trail continues up to the left, by those tree cactus.

Here is a young cactus plant. I’d hate to stumble into that pokey thing!

Off along the side, sort of in the bushes, we saw this mom and her nursing baby. He sure looks rather large to still be nursing. 🙂 Interestingly, mom sea lions have four teats. Surprising, since they usually have only one baby. I wonder why they have four?

This is a stone marker from Ecuador about this being the Galápagos National Park. We didn’t see these everywhere. I recall seeing just one other marker, on a different island. The English on the lower half just says the wildlife is protected.

And here we are on a different part of the trail, walking around more sea lions. 😀

And, off the side of the trail, we saw this land iguana. He (or she?) wasn’t very colorful compared to the previous iguanas I showed you!

Yet another sea lion on our trail. This time, I took a quick picture as we walked by her since we were very close on that particular trail. She really didn’t care about us at all. She just opened her eye and watched us walk around her.

Then, we were back at the beach, watching more sea lions!

This is a GREAT picture to show how sea lions are able to walk on all four of their flippers. They can really move fast when they want to!

Gotta love these cute babies!

Sea lions can sleep anywhere – they don’t seem to notice the rocks or unusual positions. This is a funny baby pic!

This sure doesn’t look comfortable… In case you are wondering, her head is at the top.

And then she used a rock as a pillow…

Along the bushes surrounding the beach, we saw this very new baby and mom. She gave birth very recently – you can see her hind end still has some blood there from the birth.