Santa Cruz Island
Puerto Ayora is the most populated and developed town of the Galápagos archipelago. With somewhere around 23,000 people, who mostly work in tourism or tourism-related activities, it is probably also one of the busiest ports in Ecuador.
Santa Cruz is the home of the Galápagos National Park Service and the Charles Darwin Research Station, which have established a breeding center to save the giant tortoises from extinction; these gentle creatures have been and are still at risk due to human-related activities and, most of all, due to the presence of introduced species which are considered today the major threat to the island ecosystems.
The giant tortoises that inhabit this place are divided into 11 different subspecies. Some of them are the saddlebacks that live in very arid ecosystems; not having enough to eat at ground level they raise their heads to reach the vegetation that is up in trees. This common practice has deformed the carapace, or shell, giving them this particular shape.
Then there are the dome-shaped shells; opposite to saddlebacks, these tortoises live on islands that have a higher altitude, more rain water and lush vegetation; tortoises here forage the ground without having to raise their heads while feeding; as a result, the individuals here are much bigger in size and have a grand round shape.
At this time of the year, the very beginning of the hot rainy season, some tortoises have already mated and have migrated to the lowlands, looking for suitable places in which to nest. Some old males, tired of following the females around, have decided to stay and surprised us as we did our hike up in the highlands; there were also females that are still too young to nest, so we had a wonderful afternoon walking among these individuals that, for different reasons, have remained in the area.
As we started to head down from the highlands, we were surprised by one individual that was blocking our passage. Sofia, with some help (actually five of our guests) had to get off the bus and pick the tortoise up to leave it on the side of the road so we could go down to Puerto Ayora, our final destination of the day… this really was a close encounter with these magnificent creatures that inhabit this magical place!
