Santa Cruz Island
Every special natural place has an emblematic animal. In our archipelago the tortoises are the ones. Starting with the fact that the Galápagos Islands were named after the giant tortoises, every visitor coming to Galápagos dreams about meeting these giants. Today we had our opportunity.
We arrived to Santa Cruz Island to visit Puerto Ayora town in the morning. In this place, the Galápagos National Park has established its main offices, as well as the Charles Darwin Research Station. We found here the star program of these two organizations: the breeding center of Giants Tortoises. We had the opportunity to see different varieties of tortoises as well as two very famous tortoises: Lonesome George, who is unfortunately the last individual of his species, and Diego, who was brought back from the San Diego Zoo in order to help with the breeding program.
After this visit we had a chance to walk along the main avenue of Puerto Ayora. We could shop, visit the fishing market or just wander around.
In the afternoon we went to a very different place. Buses took us to a restaurant located in the humid zone of Santa Cruz Island. We explored an old lava tube, which was quite interesting, dark and long. Our youngest guest loved it! We had a delicious lunch and afterwards we went to look for tortoises in the wild. We found several of them, of various sizes; they were feeding in the green grass around us.
We visited as well a wonderful Scalesia forest, one of the last endemic forests in the Galápagos. Here, the plan was to enjoy the unique vegetation, and look for land birds like the very famous Darwin Finches. We were amazed by the Pit Craters, two huge sinkholes on both sides of the trail.
By the end of the day, we were all ready to go back to our ship. We had a very busy day, and it was worth it – we will not soon forget our tortoise’s day!
