Santa Cruz Island
We arrived to Santa Cruz Island at seven o’clock in the morning. This is an inhabited island, with the largest population among all. After our breakfast we landed in the town of Puerto Ayora. It was nice to see the local people, interacting with the wildlife; we found sea lions resting on board fishermen’s boats and lots of wildlife along the main street.
At Puerto Ayora we had the chance to visit the Charles Darwin Research Station. It was nice to sea the little tortoises which where almost new born, as well as the giant ones; it’s hard to imagine that those small babies about the size of an open hand are going to reach weights of 500 pounds!
At the Darwin Station we found Lonesome George, very active. He was right in the middle of his pond. We also saw his girlfriend companions from Wolf Volcano.
Later in the day we headed to the highlands of Santa Cruz via bus, to go to a nice local lodge for our luncheon.
In the afternoon we were offered many options. One of them was the “do it all” option. By choosing that, most of us had the chance to go to a wonderful geological formation called Los Gemelos or The Twins; these are two giant pit craters surrounded by an endemic forest which is very lush.
At this site we also found lots of Darwin’s finches, Galápagos doves, and Galápagos mockingbirds. We wanted to do it all, so we went afterwards to see giant tortoises in the wild. We found so many very big ones, grazing and moving a lot.
Some of our guests went to do just the second option, which was the visit to see the tortoises in the wild (not the stop at the pit craters), so they had some extra time later to do some shopping in Puerto Ayora town.
