Santa Cruz Island
Today we explored in the middle of the Galápagos archipelago. This island is called Santa Cruz, and it is the economic capital of the Galápagos Islands. This is where the Galápagos National Park and the Charles Darwin Research Station are headquartered as well as many other administrative institutions of the islands.
We landed in the morning at Puerto Ayora, which is the main settlement on Santa Cruz. We explored the town for a while and eventually we moved to the highlands for the morning activities. To reach the highlands took about a 30-minute bus ride. In the highlands the temperature is cooler and there is an evergreen forest sustained by the moisture typical of the place.
In this greenery we also have grasslands with a lot of Darwin finches and the renowned Galápagos giant tortoises! As we explored the forest and grassland we found a lot of new wildlife, and eventually we found these gentle giants taking a bath in the seasonal ponds.
Indeed they were large. And each giant tortoise can reach a weight of 500 pounds or more. The moist highlands are the habitat for tortoises as food and water is abundant. These reptiles are more jungle dwellers than lowland dwellers, unlike their marine counterparts; giant tortoises lay their eggs in the forest and not on the beaches.
In the afternoon we visited the Charles Darwin Research Station and we had a great time! Besides getting to know firsthand the threats that local organisms face and the solutions and great successes of the conservation institutions, we saw more giant tortoises and some of them were mating.
