Santa Cruz Island
It is our fourth expedition day in the Galápagos and so far each island has been a new world. Our activities started at 8:00 in the morning with a visit to the Charles Darwin Research Station, situated in the town of Puerto Ayora, in Santa Cruz, the most populated island and the second largest in size after Isabela.
This place is famous because it has the first rearing center of giant tortoises in the archipelago; our guests were part of it, visiting several pens with newborn tortoises and observing them step-by-step in the program until they are ready to be taken to the wild; everybody was so surprised imagining these babies, now the size of a donut, growing to weigh more than 500 pounds in approximately 100 years!
Lonesome George and Diego, both saddle back tortoises, were the stars of the morning: George being the last survivor of his species and Diego being an Española tortoise who was repatriated from San Diego Zoo to the Galápagos – he came with the mission of saving the ones of his kind.
Later in the morning, we headed up to the highlands of Santa Cruz and had many activities before lunch; some guests decided to explore the highlands mountain biking, while others visited a local school supported by Lindblad Expeditions. Afterwards everybody ended up at a sugar cane mill owned by a local family; they were so happy to share with us the different products made out of the sugar cane juice!
In the afternoon, after our barbeque lunch, we went in search of more giant tortoises; more than 30 tortoises were found in the wild!
It was a great day, we saw it all, and now we are looking forward to see more in this marvelous paradise called the Enchanted Islands.
