Santa Cruz Island
One of the best Tuesdays of our lives was this one shared with the gentle Galápagos giant land tortoises. The morning outing took us to visit the rearing centre in Puerto Ayora.
The Galápagos National Park Service together with the Charles Darwin Foundation have been working hand in hand since the early sixties to restore the populations of these gentle giants. Worldwide, this is one of the most successful programs that raises wild animals in captivity.
Our naturalists gave us a very detailed explanation on how this program works and how successfully the repatriated land tortoises are reproducing in the wild. Once done with these details we all headed to the bus station downtown to be taken up to the highlands of Santa Cruz.
The highlights of the afternoon were of course the giant tortoises in their natural habitat as well as the lava tube we walked through, the huge sink holes, the Scalesia forest as well as the happy and numerous finches, fly-catchers and mockingbirds that accompanied us on our second full day in paradise.
One of the best Tuesdays of our lives was this one shared with the gentle Galápagos giant land tortoises. The morning outing took us to visit the rearing centre in Puerto Ayora.
The Galápagos National Park Service together with the Charles Darwin Foundation have been working hand in hand since the early sixties to restore the populations of these gentle giants. Worldwide, this is one of the most successful programs that raises wild animals in captivity.
Our naturalists gave us a very detailed explanation on how this program works and how successfully the repatriated land tortoises are reproducing in the wild. Once done with these details we all headed to the bus station downtown to be taken up to the highlands of Santa Cruz.
The highlights of the afternoon were of course the giant tortoises in their natural habitat as well as the lava tube we walked through, the huge sink holes, the Scalesia forest as well as the happy and numerous finches, fly-catchers and mockingbirds that accompanied us on our second full day in paradise.
