By now we had done a counter-clockwise loop through the islands, and were back to Santa Cruz, only this time the northern side (pretty close to the airport where were started 11 days earlier). Our first stop was Mosquera, a really tiny island just a few 100 yards long. It’s in that small inset above. Beach surrounds the entire island, with small rock outcroppings on either end. Almost no vegetation – certainly nothing tall. But a wonderful little island.
There were a few shorebirds wandering around, which gave me opportunity take one of my favorite type of shots – wide aspect ratio crop with a focus line running diagonally across the frame.
There was a very stern looking heron at the southern part of the island, with some nice red ground cover providing some color. I had to move around quite a bit and get wet in the surf to get a decent angle. The final 2 shots look like they were taken from the same location, only for the last one I had crouched down quite a bit.
Towards the end of the hour I hung out near the northern part of the island, where this little rock outcropping was covered with sally lightfoot crabs and a couple of small marine iguanas. I intentionally used the sally’s as either foreground or background, with focus on the iguana, because, even if they’re blurry, you know that’s a crab. I had tried this earlier in the trip, but here it worked very well (it helped immensely that the sun was out).
Snorkeling was just a small group again, just 4 members of the group. We went along the east side of the island, where it drops off fairly quickly (those numbers must be depth, which sound about right). What can I say other than: Hammerheads! This is well-known to be the spot where you’d see them, although typically you’d have to scuba since they hang out on the bottom. The ocean bottom is 40 feet down, and we haven’t been able to see 40 feet down all week. Just shear luck, we had perfectly clear water, and 2 minutes after dropping in, we saw them circling on the ocean floor.
It was very cold, the current was quite strong, so after an hour we hopped back into the panga to warm up and talk about the incredible experience we just had.
The afternoon excursion was a panga ride through the mangroves. Like every other mangrove visit, this did not disappoint. There were the usual sea turtles and baby sharks, but the highlight was this beautiful black-crowned night heron. It was hiding behind a couple of branches, so it was difficult to get an unobstructed shot (you can see us all maneuvering below). Eventually we got to a nice spot and the heron shimmied up the vine for a picture-perfect shot.
We tried for some more of that sunset silhouette magic from Day 6, but alas, the sun did not cooperate. We did, however, see this nice blue-footed booby, but you’ll note their feet aren’t quite as bright blue as some of the others. Tui had noticed these muted blue feet before, and took a couple of pictures to share with her science friends.
Back to Day 10, forward to Day 12. Or head to this day’s SmugMug gallery.
