Santa Cruz, Puerto Ayora
Today we had a fabulous day in the land of the giant tortoise. This natural emblem of the Galápagos Islands roams freely in the highlands of Santa Cruz. During the sixteen, seventeen and eighteen hundreds, whalers and buccaneers killed many of these gentle giants for food and oil. Many thousands were killed, driving this species almost to extinction.
At the beginning of the 1960s, the Galápagos Park Service, together with the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) started a program to grow giant tortoises in captivity to refill the islands with the emblem of the archipelago. For fifty years we have been working with excellent results.
The highlight of the morning was the baby tortoises at the rearing centre. The program has made many thousands baby tortoises that are again roaming freely. But there are many more to go.
The afternoon offered a number of different activities, including biking, swimming in a local swimming pool, volleyball playing, and having lunch up at a ranch full of greenery. All of this was part of the afternoon in Santa Cruz.
It was a really nice experience to share our time with the free wild tortoises up in the mountains of the island, a broad variety of Darwin’s finches, mockingbirds, doves, the Galápagos Rail, and Common Gallinule, all of which were part of our nice time spent here.
