Today our guests experienced Santiago Island. This is the island that Darwin explored the most when he visited the Galapagos in 1835. Back in those days the only wildlife that was known from the Galapagos were the giant tortoises. For more than a century, first buccaneers and later whalers, came to the Galapagos to remove giant tortoises for food, to the extent that some populations are at the brink of extinction.