Santa Cruz Island
After a long navigation from the western side of the archipelago with a delay to our arrival because of a small counter current, we finally arrive to our next destination. Santa Cruz Island is a place with many different faces and the town of Puerto Ayora holds about 15,000 persons. The main economic activities are tourism commerce and fishing.
At 08:30 we disembarked at the harbor which was already boiling at 92°F. This is extremely common at this time of the year and should not surprise us even if it is not noon yet. Some of our guests found an interesting new experience with the tortoises at the Charles Darwin Center. We visited the corral of Lonesome George, a tortoise from Pinta Island which survived the extinction of his fellow Pinta tortoises caused by whalers, buccaneers, fishermen and introduced species. We also visited Diego’s corral a tortoise from Espanola Island that was found in the San Diego Zoo a long time ago and was the only tortoise to be taken back to the Islands in order to make him reproduce with the small population of females at the center in Santa Cruz.
We also found here the hatchlings of Pinzon Island which are a delicate population of tortoises in an infested Island where introduced rats destroyed their habitat. Now the tortoises need to be raised until they are five years old at the center and then they will be repatriated to the island that they belong with.
Everything here is new for us, and some were surprised with some of the hatchlings of 2010. The tortoises are relatively young if we compare them to our ages.
In the afternoon the lunch was amazing at Altair restaurant. Right after we took the bus ride to pair of pit craters and a farm where land tortoises are littered among the grasslands like boulders. One of the reasons we visit this place is because of the great amount of tortoises that can be found in their natural state as this area is in the migration path.
Before the Galápagos were colonized, they survived the pirates, whalers, and buccaneers. The true human population arrived on Santa Cruz and the highlands in the early 1900’s. The dramatic packed vegetation at the lowlands made it difficult to carry a 700 pound tortoise 13 miles back to a ship anchored a half mile away from the coast.
After observing an abundance of bird species including Darwin finches, flycatchers, egrets and herons, we made our journey back to our floating home. Today was an incredible day in the Galápagos, and we had an opportunity to contemplate the giant tortoise and its natural history.
