Santa Cruz Island
After a delicious breakfast with an amazing ocean view in our dining room, we started our day disembarking at eight in the morning, to go to Santa Cruz Island, the most populated island in the Galápagos.
For the morning we planned the visit to the rearing center of giant tortoises of the national park and passed through the headquarters of the Charles Darwin Research Station; for all our guests this was a special visit since they could see exactly how our government is doing such a good job in restoring the population of giant tortoises of the islands. All of the tortoises were very active; we saw a lot of babies, some adults, and the famous super Diego from Española Island.
After our morning visit, our guests were given some time to explore the town of Puerto Ayora, most of them went shopping, shortly afterwards we boarded buses to head up to the highlands of Santa Cruz and stopped at a sugar cane mill where a local family has made a business out of the production of sugar cane juice and coffee. It was nice to see the other side of Galápagos—not just the wildlife or the conservation side but the people, their activities, and how they live in such a marvelous place.
In the afternoon after lunch at a local restaurant of the highlands, we organize groups for the do-it-all option, which included the visit to the gemelos, or pit craters, and a giant tortoise field. The pit craters gave us a nice perspective of how the highlands used to look like before people colonized those areas, the walk was done through an endemic forest, along the rim of the giant pit craters. The tortoise field was full of the endemic Santa Cruz giant tortoise, many were huge males, which could have weighed up to 500 pounds, and we saw so many that we lost count!
It was a successful day, and we finally had the chance to see the symbol of the Galápagos—the giant tortoise. We also saw the human side of the islands, which made our day in this wonderful paradise.
