Galapagos Adventure — Day Four
Santa Cruz Island
What a day — morning and afternoon encounters with the islands’ most famous residents, the Galapagos tortoises; exploring the volcanic geology of the islands in the afternoon with a climb through a lava tunnel; and then a lovely dinner in the highlands to top it all off.
It’s just the most amazing thing to see these enormous animals, especially in the wild. (I wrote about this in my highlights blog.) It reminds of seeing wallabees in the bushes at the golf course in Australia. Only this seems even more extraordinary, probably because you can get so close. The tortoises seem to patiently tolerate your existence, as is their nature, going their own way, which sometimes involves lumbering right towards any visitor who may be in their path.
I took hundreds of pictures during my trip, but this was one of the hardest blogs to choose photos for because I probably have a hundred photos just of tortoises.
After another overnight navigation of several hours (this time I took Dramamine before we started moving), we awoke to human civilization again. Puerto Ayora is the largest area of human habitation in the Galapagos, home to more than half of the island’s population. A peek out my tiny porthole showed tens of boats large and small, and buildings all along the coast.
But the trip back to the world was worth it because this is the home of the Charles Darwin Research Station. Scientists from all over the globe are stationed here to study the unique wildlife of the islands — creatures that are often found no where else in the world. The islands are a living laboratory of natural selection and habitat.
The Research Station is home to the tortoise breeding center. In previous centuries, sailors found tortoises an excellent source of fresh meat, a rare thing when one was at sea for years at a time. The animals were taken aboard alive, and could survive for a long time with little maintenance. More recently there have been problems with habitat destruction in the form of introduced species such as goats. One chart at the research station shows the results of an eradication program for non-endemic species.
The result of this past scarcity is that visitors get to see tortoises in all stages of development, from babies smaller than your hand to full-grown adults weighing as much or more than a person.
The babies are color-coded with paint that eventually wears off. The markings indicate what island their type is from so they can be placed in the wild when they are a few years old. They stay with their own kind when they’re very young, then graduate to a more natural environment with tortoises of other types.
At the research station there are natural habitat areas for adult tortoises where visitors can walk right up to them. There are certain areas within the habitat that you cannot walk on, but you can get as close to a tortoise, maybe closer, than you probably do to most of your co-workers.
After visiting the research station we were on our own until lunch, which gave us time to buy souvenirs in the station’s gift shop or from one of the many little shops that line Darwin Avenue the half mile or so back to the pier.
In the afternoon we took a van to a ranch about a half hour up into the highlands of Santa Cruz island, where tortoises roam wild in their natural habitat. It is one of the strangest things, to look off into the brush and see a tortoise, lumbering along. It seems like it should be a movie or even a cartoon.
These tortoises are not as used to people as those at the research station, so we didn’t get quite as close and were sure not to make too much noise. Their normal habitat is quiet and peaceful, bucolic really.
After a wondrous hike through the ranch, exploring tortoise habitats, we had an adventure worthy of Indiana Jones navigating through a lava tunnel. Very cool. I wrote more about this on my highlights blog.
The evening ended with dinner at the captain’s sister’s home high atop Santa Cruz Island, with a view of the town below and the ocean and islands beyond. Quite a lovely hacienda-style front dining room with high arched windows looking out to sea and a fantastic meal. We even sampled the orange wine, one of the things for which the Cruz family is famous. I couldn’t pass up a taste of it — more like cognac than wine.