Santa Cruz Island
Landing on Puerto Ayora in a new year, it was good to discover that it hasn’t changed much from last year. The streets are the same colorful ones we walked along last week, Pelican Bay is still located where it’s always been, and the baby tortoises look healthy and keep growing here until the day they will be repatriated to their home islands. Life is good in the Galápagos.
2008 brings us new challenges of course, but any obstacle will be overcome, and this National Park will continue to be an example to the world of good sustainable management and successful conservation programs. How could we be unsure of this when we made our observations today: we looked at our adopted baby tortoises of San Salvador Island (Lindblad’s adopted island), we looked at the iguanas that are also being bred at the headquarters of the National Park and Charles Darwin Research Station, and we encountered dozens of healthy tortoises in the wild in a sunny and beautiful afternoon while visiting the highlands of Santa Cruz. We can only feel very optimistic about the future of this archipelago.
Landing on Puerto Ayora in a new year, it was good to discover that it hasn’t changed much from last year. The streets are the same colorful ones we walked along last week, Pelican Bay is still located where it’s always been, and the baby tortoises look healthy and keep growing here until the day they will be repatriated to their home islands. Life is good in the Galápagos.
2008 brings us new challenges of course, but any obstacle will be overcome, and this National Park will continue to be an example to the world of good sustainable management and successful conservation programs. How could we be unsure of this when we made our observations today: we looked at our adopted baby tortoises of San Salvador Island (Lindblad’s adopted island), we looked at the iguanas that are also being bred at the headquarters of the National Park and Charles Darwin Research Station, and we encountered dozens of healthy tortoises in the wild in a sunny and beautiful afternoon while visiting the highlands of Santa Cruz. We can only feel very optimistic about the future of this archipelago.
