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Galapagos Tours Showcases Iguanas

Early 2011 Good Time For Iguanas

Rainy Season Showcases Both Land & Marine Varieties


Early 2011 is a great time to enjoy Galapagos Tours for Iguana lovers.  The rainy season brings abundant food sources that bloom in colors Iguanas like to munch on.  This is also the time of year when mating begins so visitors can witness lots of social activity in January and February.  In fact, one of the best kept secrets of the Galapagos Islands is their amazing year-round richness in wildlife viewing, regardless of the weather.

Galapagos Explorer offers three, four, and seven night Galapagos tours for travelers.  Several islands showcase large populations of both marine and land iguanas.  During the mating season, marine iguanas can be seen swimming across Academy Bay on Santa Cruz Island, searching for females and territories.  Because of El Nina conditions this year marine iguanas are doing particularly well so there’s plenty of them.

Other Islands in the archipelago that the Explorer II visits on your Galapagos tours sport numerous marine iguanas as well.  You’ll love to watch them around Fernandina and Santiago Islands.  And through February, the Espanola Iguana takes on very vibrant green and red coloring, most likely due to eating red algae in the waters around Espanola.  As Darwin discovered, the same species can adapt differently from island to island, in part due to the diet they eat.

This time of year land iguanas are also present in abundance in the Galapagos.  The Opuntia prickly pear cactus blooms these early months and is one of the favorite foods for land iguanas.  Besides the flowers, land iguanas eat the fruits and pads of the cactus.  What could be more fun than watching a herd of iguanas lunching on cactus while on your Galapagos tours?   And on Isabela Island, land iguanas might munch on the yellow Cordia plant, also a favorite food for them.

All in all, Galapagos tours facilitate the display of iguanas with particular color and frequency in the early part of each year.  Both marine and land iguanas await their audience with particular gusto – a gusto sophisticated travelers have come to enjoy and expect when looking for the next big adventure in unique destinations.