Santa Cruz Island
Today we woke up at the island of Santa Cruz in Academy Bay. After breakfast we disembarked to visit the Charles Darwin Research Station and had the opportunity to see the giant tortoise breeding program. One individual, Lonesome George is a very famous icon of conservation and is the only living tortoise from Pinta Island as well. We also saw another famous tortoise, Diego from Española Island; he spent many years in the San Diego Zoo in the United States. Luckily he was kept alive and when his origin was finally determined he returned to Ecuador to save his own race that was on the verge of extinction for very few individuals from his island had survived in the wild. Oh boy! Diego has been a celebrity, very active in producing so many babies.
After the visit our guests had the chance to explore the city of Puerto Ayora, which is the largest in the archipelago. At 11:30 we boarded buses and drove towards the highlands where we had a blast of a time. Today was awesome; we saw an unusually large number of tortoises in the wild – at least a hundred of them! In the lowlands it is already dry at this time of the year, so the tortoises are roaming in the vicinity of the highlands in the search of food and water. Tramping around with these giant critters that look like antediluvian remains of dinosaurs is a real treat – wow!
We also saw the Scalesia trees which are in the daisy family. They are giant forms of daisys seen only in the Galápagos Islands. But there was more, we also saw the pit craters, a couple of Vermilion flycatchers and lots of Darwin finches including the hard-to-find Woodpecker finch. The climate was almost perfect; a nice cooling air was refreshing and enough to make us feel comfortable.
In the evening at recap, we had a talk on marine iguanas, and we learned about this amazing and only sea going lizard on Earth. I am pretty sure tomorrow will be another great day for we will be all the way across to the western side of the archipelago.
