Santa Cruz Island
Today, we arrived at Santa Cruz Island early in the morning and anchored in Academy Bay, finding ourselves at the most populated island of the Galápagos. After breakfast we boarded our Zodiacs and headed toward the main jetty, where buses were ready to take us to the Galápagos National Park. As we arrived we were welcomed by a small group of marine iguanas, basking under the sun.
Our rainy season is not giving up, and soft showers are still falling on the major islands. We expected very warm weather for the morning, although some nice clouds shaded most of our path. Our aim was to find the Galápagos giant tortoises, and learn about the reproduction and repatriation programs. We met individuals from different islands, including the elusive and famous Lonesome George, his females, and Diego, the tortoise from Española Island that has fathered over 500 babies already. We learned about their successful repatriation program to the islands, where introduced animals made it impossible for them to survive in the past.
We walked through the giant prickly pear cactus forest, and enjoyed the size of these tree-like cacti. We also met a good number of the different species of Darwin finches.
Our afternoon was also very exciting, as we were in the search of giant tortoises in the wild. For this, we traveled by bus to the highlands of Santa Cruz. We also learned about scary lava tunnels and had the opportunity to walk along the famous sink holes and the mysterious forest of Galápagos giant daisies. We left the highlands while we still had some time and energy left to do some shopping in town.
