Santa Cruz Island
It’s eight in the morning and we’re ready to leave the Islander for a wonderful morning in Puerto Ayora. This town has the largest population in Galápagos, and I am included in the count, as I was born right here. This is a warm, multicultural environment, of varied traditions and “P.A.” (as it is called for short) is the home of the two local institutions that work for conservation in the islands: the Charles Darwin Station and the Galápagos National Park.
Our first stop was a visit to the CDRS installations where giant tortoises are kept for breeding. These include a celebrity, "Lonesome George," whose sad story is known far and wide out side the Archipelago: George, from the northern island of Pinta, is the only one left of his kind. George posed for cameras today, like a real movie star.
We met a second famous tortoise, Diego, whose story is much happier. “Super Diego” has fathered hundreds of rare Española tortoises and has helped to save his species from extinction. 40 years ago they numbered only 13 adult individuals and now there are close to 2000 Española tortoises! In several pens, small and recently hatched baby tortoises that have been reared in captivity are waiting until their fifth birthday to be repatriated to the islands of their origin.
We had free time in town and the chance to help the local economy with our purchases, and then we gathered at the town’s main park and boarded buses to the highlands. We had a tasty lunch in an open–air restaurant; very good food and it was delightful to escape the heat of the lowlands!
We hiked along a forest trail searching for giant tortoises in the green pastures and in their natural state. We were pleased to find several very large ones, in addition to lush and exotic vegetation, and many birds: finches, ducks, egrets, and flycatchers to name a few. Like so many of the creatures of Galápagos, the birds were fearless of humans, which make them easy to spot. The finches were not easy to identify, however!
A little later we headed by bus to the spectacular geological formations of Los Gemelos, or pit-craters. They are empty and collapsed magma chambers surrounded by a dense forest of giant daisies, the Scalesia trees. From a distance the tightly packed Scalesia look like a giant broccoli forest. We returned to the ship tired but content - with many marvelous images of this magical place in our retinas, in our cameras and in our memories.
It’s eight in the morning and we’re ready to leave the Islander for a wonderful morning in Puerto Ayora. This town has the largest population in Galápagos, and I am included in the count, as I was born right here. This is a warm, multicultural environment, of varied traditions and “P.A.” (as it is called for short) is the home of the two local institutions that work for conservation in the islands: the Charles Darwin Station and the Galápagos National Park.
Our first stop was a visit to the CDRS installations where giant tortoises are kept for breeding. These include a celebrity, "Lonesome George," whose sad story is known far and wide out side the Archipelago: George, from the northern island of Pinta, is the only one left of his kind. George posed for cameras today, like a real movie star.
We met a second famous tortoise, Diego, whose story is much happier. “Super Diego” has fathered hundreds of rare Española tortoises and has helped to save his species from extinction. 40 years ago they numbered only 13 adult individuals and now there are close to 2000 Española tortoises! In several pens, small and recently hatched baby tortoises that have been reared in captivity are waiting until their fifth birthday to be repatriated to the islands of their origin.
We had free time in town and the chance to help the local economy with our purchases, and then we gathered at the town’s main park and boarded buses to the highlands. We had a tasty lunch in an open–air restaurant; very good food and it was delightful to escape the heat of the lowlands!
We hiked along a forest trail searching for giant tortoises in the green pastures and in their natural state. We were pleased to find several very large ones, in addition to lush and exotic vegetation, and many birds: finches, ducks, egrets, and flycatchers to name a few. Like so many of the creatures of Galápagos, the birds were fearless of humans, which make them easy to spot. The finches were not easy to identify, however!
A little later we headed by bus to the spectacular geological formations of Los Gemelos, or pit-craters. They are empty and collapsed magma chambers surrounded by a dense forest of giant daisies, the Scalesia trees. From a distance the tightly packed Scalesia look like a giant broccoli forest. We returned to the ship tired but content - with many marvelous images of this magical place in our retinas, in our cameras and in our memories.
