Baltra Airport: Departure from Quito or Guayaquil to Baltra (2 1/2 hours flight). Passengers are picked up at the airport by our naturalist guides and taken on a ten minute bus drive to the pier to board the M/V Galapagos Legend.

Highlands & Pit Craters, Santa Cruz Island: Dry landing. A 45-minute bus ride will take us to the Santa Cruz highlands, located to the northwest of Puerto Ayora, where we will find a natural reserve with giant tortoises. Additionally, travelers can walk inside surprising lava tubes; we also visit Pit Craters created from the collapse of surface materials into chamber fissures underground. It's a great place to spot Vermilion Flycatcher as we walk inside an endemic Scalesia forest.

(Dinner & Accommodation, M/V Galapagos Legend)

El Barranco, Genovesa Island: Riding our pangas to the far side of the caldera, we will spot red-billed tropicbirds overhead while Galapagos fur seals can be seen on the shoreline. Once at the top of the rocky stairway we are immediately met by Nazca boobies, red-footed boobies, mockingbirds and finches that line our way through a palo santo forest until we arrive at an expansive open lava field, where we can find Wedge-rumped storm petrels and short-eared owls.

Darwin Bay: From within the flooded caldera of Tower Island we set foot onto a sandy beach. Our short, flat, trail leads us past stands of mangroves and saltbush on which we have our best possible look at nesting red-footed boobies and great frigatebirds. At the tidal lagoon we may also see the rarest gull in the world, the endemic lava gull.

(Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & Accommodation, M/V Galapagos Legend)

Dragon Hill, Santa Cruz Island (Snorkeling): Dry landing. We walk by a brackish lagoon where feeding flamingoes can be occasionally found. The trail leads across typical dry zone vegetation up to Dragon Hill, an important nesting ground for endemic land iguanas, offering lovely views of the anchorage and neighboring islands. The forest is home to mockingbirds, Darwin's finches, Yellow Warblers and Galapagos Doves.

Santa Fe Island: Wet landing. Enjoy a fabulous snorkel in the turquoise waters of the protected bay with sea lions, turtles, reef sharks and spotted eagle rays. On the sandy beach we will find abundant sea lions as we begin a walk past a forest of island-endemic giant Opuntia cacti. Here we search for another island-endemic: the Santa Fe land iguana, paler than its cousins on other islands.

(Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & Accommodation, M/V Galapagos Legend)

Bachas Beach (Santa Cruz): Wet landing on the north side of Santa Cruz; behind the beach lie two small flamingo ponds with iguanas, coastal birds, Darwin finches, mockingbirds, and gulls, as well as interesting native and endemic vegetation, red and black mangroves, salt bushes, and much more. This beach is one of the main nesting sites of sea turtles* in the Galapagos. A female can lay eggs 3 or 4 times with an average of 70 eggs each, but then spend 3 or 5 years without breeding.

At this paradisiacal site we will also find the remains of barges that sank long ago, once property of the United States Navy when they operated an airbase on Baltra Island during World War II. That is why the beach is called "Bachas" because the word "barges" in English was hard to pronounce for the local people.

Baltra Airport: Transfer to the airport for return flight to Guayaquil or Quito.

(Breakfast, M/V Galapagos Legend)