Santa Cruz Island
The sun rises at six o’clock in Academy Bay, and our eager guests began the morning with a "Dolphin stretch" on the sky deck. What a good way to start this day which we will spend in the beautiful island of Santa Cruz. Here the Charles Darwin Research Station is working along with the Galápagos National Park Service by reproducing giant tortoises in captivity and later repatriated them to their home islands from which they did come from. Tortoises have been at the edge of extinction in certain islands before the breeding program.
Nowadays we are proud that the tortoises are back home doing well and even some of them started to breed on their own. So we are on the “right track”, hoping that some day these tortoises will come back into their normal state.
We visited the corral of Lonesome George, a tortoise from Pinta Island which survived the extinction of his fellow population caused by whalers, buccaneers, fishermen and introduced species. And we also visited Diego’s corral, he's a tortoise from Española Island that was found in San Diego zoo.
We had a delicious lunch in the highlands in a place that had facilities for swimming and playing volleyball. Afterwards we went to the giant tortoise’s reserve, where we were searching for tortoises on their natural state, like whalers and early colonizers, looking at them and sharing an amazing feeling just like they did over three hundred years ago.
We went birdwatching and finches were everywhere and in variety.
In town we spent some time shopping and supporting the local economy, buying unique handicrafts. At six in the afternoon we came back onboard, and recap was our highlight and source of information.
The sun rises at six o’clock in Academy Bay, and our eager guests began the morning with a "Dolphin stretch" on the sky deck. What a good way to start this day which we will spend in the beautiful island of Santa Cruz. Here the Charles Darwin Research Station is working along with the Galápagos National Park Service by reproducing giant tortoises in captivity and later repatriated them to their home islands from which they did come from. Tortoises have been at the edge of extinction in certain islands before the breeding program.
Nowadays we are proud that the tortoises are back home doing well and even some of them started to breed on their own. So we are on the “right track”, hoping that some day these tortoises will come back into their normal state.
We visited the corral of Lonesome George, a tortoise from Pinta Island which survived the extinction of his fellow population caused by whalers, buccaneers, fishermen and introduced species. And we also visited Diego’s corral, he's a tortoise from Española Island that was found in San Diego zoo.
We had a delicious lunch in the highlands in a place that had facilities for swimming and playing volleyball. Afterwards we went to the giant tortoise’s reserve, where we were searching for tortoises on their natural state, like whalers and early colonizers, looking at them and sharing an amazing feeling just like they did over three hundred years ago.
We went birdwatching and finches were everywhere and in variety.
In town we spent some time shopping and supporting the local economy, buying unique handicrafts. At six in the afternoon we came back onboard, and recap was our highlight and source of information.
