Santa Cruz Island
Today we arrived early in the morning at Academy Bay on Santa Cruz Island. As we arrived, local buses waited to take us to the highlands. First we had to fit on rubber boots as it has been raining every day; this is a very good thing for land birds as it provides food and water to finches, mockingbirds, and tortoises.
After driving for half an hour we got to a local farm located in the boundaries of the tortoise’s reserve. This morning we explored this area well and found four giant tortoises in the wild; this is one of the most unusual looking animals in the world. It looks very primitive and perhaps gets our attention not only because of its large size and heavy weight but also because of its ability to live so long, more than 100 years!
Also the fact that these animals have survived for millions of years is something that intrigues our minds; we had the great luck of finding them surrounded by vegetation that is so dense and thick that only a strong animal could go through without getting stuck in it.
We also looked for Galápagos finches; this is an island where one can find several species. We looked and found small, medium and large ground finches, as well as small tree finches, common cactus finches, and woodpecker finches working with a tool to get insect larvae from old trees. These small humble-looking birds were a very important subject to develop Darwin’s ideas; maybe these birds are not so colorful, yet they got our attention well, as this is their mating season and one can hear their songs all over the place.
For the afternoon some of our guests went to visit the Darwin Station as well as the giant tortoise breeding center; there we also found some very famous tortoises like Lonesome George and his two female companions which belong to Española Island.
We got to see so much today, it was a very special day for us.
