South Plazas Day Tour

This sea mammal is one of the most charismatics animals in the islands. Its curiosity and playful behavior made a perfect companion for underwater experiences. Their bodies are fusiform and cover with thick layer of fur. Underneath the skin they have a white fat layer that insulates the body core from the cold environment. The fins got a different kind of fat, a brown fat layer that helps with the opposite, to cool down, this is very useful to avoid overheated during a persecution, going after a prey or running away from a predator. In very hot days is not unusual to find sea lion in the surface of the sea, showing their fins to the air, or in cold days, laying on the sand covering their fin with their body.

In Galapagos we have three species of land iguanas: Santa Fe iguana, the pink iguana (distributed exclusively in Wolf Volcano of Isabela island) and the Galapagos land iguana, known also as the yellow iguana. This reptile is not as common as the marine iguana, since they were hunted as food for the first sailors, they apparently taste like chicken, while the marine iguana had a very bad taste. Another reason is that the land iguana depends on land vegetation and alien species as goats, donkeys, pigs and rats destroyed most of their habitat. There are only five population left of this yellow iguana: Fernandina, North of Isabela, Baltra (North Seymour), Dragon Hill (Santa Cruz) and South Plazas. Recently about 2,000 land iguanas from North Seymour were re-introduce to Santiago Island, to recover this ecosystem.

Hybridism happens when one species breed with another similar species, crossing an species limit is not as unusual at it seems. For example the mule is a result of sa horse and a donkey breeding. In the Galapagos land iguanas this have been observed only in South Plazas, where a marine iguana male use to mate with land iguanas females. The result are dark white striped iguanas. Most of the hybrids don't survive for long, and normally they can't produce offspring.