Santa Cruz and North Seymour
Every Tuesday we spend half of the day on the second largest island in Galápagos. This is Santa Cruz, and it is one of my favourite places among these islands. Here we take our guests to the highlands and search for tortoises in the wild. Today we found at least 20 and some were huge, old males. We climbed into and followed a lava tube for about a quarter of a mile and had a well-deserved breakfast at an open-air restaurant.
Then we re-boarded the buses and went down to the coast to explore the largest town in Galápagos, Puerto Ayora. Some of us shopped and others visited the tortoise rearing center at the Darwin Research Station. After a couple of days away from civilization, it was time to make phone calls and check email and Puerto Ayora is the perfect place for this.
At midday we returned to the ship and navigated to North Seymour. This is a small island, but it is home to a great number of birds and animals and interesting plants. One of the main attractions is the courting frigate birds. This afternoon several of the males had their big red balloon pouches inflated and were posing for females.
Land iguanas are not easy to find in Galápagos. Their population has been decimated in much of their range by introduced mammals. But here on North Seymour, thanks to Captain Allan Hancock, there are land iguanas. Hancock was a rich eccentric who visited the islands in the 1920’s and 30’s. He often invited other scientists to travel with him, and they made collections for the California Academy of Sciences. In 1932 they collected iguanas on Baltra Island. Some of these they released on the nearby island of North Seymour, where there were no native land iguanas. It is almost as if Hancock knew what was going to happen a few years later.
During the Second World War, the USA took possession of Baltra. They built a runway for airplanes and roads for trucks. Following the war, this very island became an air base for Ecuador, and slowly the iguanas disappeared from Baltra. Thanks to Captain Hancock, who had moved a few of the Baltra iguanas to North Seymour, we are repatriating iguanas back to Baltra again. In today’s picture, one of our guests is taking a picture of a land iguana on North Seymour Island.
Every Tuesday we spend half of the day on the second largest island in Galápagos. This is Santa Cruz, and it is one of my favourite places among these islands. Here we take our guests to the highlands and search for tortoises in the wild. Today we found at least 20 and some were huge, old males. We climbed into and followed a lava tube for about a quarter of a mile and had a well-deserved breakfast at an open-air restaurant.
Then we re-boarded the buses and went down to the coast to explore the largest town in Galápagos, Puerto Ayora. Some of us shopped and others visited the tortoise rearing center at the Darwin Research Station. After a couple of days away from civilization, it was time to make phone calls and check email and Puerto Ayora is the perfect place for this.
At midday we returned to the ship and navigated to North Seymour. This is a small island, but it is home to a great number of birds and animals and interesting plants. One of the main attractions is the courting frigate birds. This afternoon several of the males had their big red balloon pouches inflated and were posing for females.
Land iguanas are not easy to find in Galápagos. Their population has been decimated in much of their range by introduced mammals. But here on North Seymour, thanks to Captain Allan Hancock, there are land iguanas. Hancock was a rich eccentric who visited the islands in the 1920’s and 30’s. He often invited other scientists to travel with him, and they made collections for the California Academy of Sciences. In 1932 they collected iguanas on Baltra Island. Some of these they released on the nearby island of North Seymour, where there were no native land iguanas. It is almost as if Hancock knew what was going to happen a few years later.
During the Second World War, the USA took possession of Baltra. They built a runway for airplanes and roads for trucks. Following the war, this very island became an air base for Ecuador, and slowly the iguanas disappeared from Baltra. Thanks to Captain Hancock, who had moved a few of the Baltra iguanas to North Seymour, we are repatriating iguanas back to Baltra again. In today’s picture, one of our guests is taking a picture of a land iguana on North Seymour Island.
