Santa Cruz Island
This was the day of the Giant Land Tortoise, the emblem of the Galápagos Islands, almost driven to extinction due to human hunting activities. They were the food and oil for lamps of early sailors that visited the islands; they took them away by the thousands.
In the early nineteen sixties, when the pristine Park Service started to establish conservation programs around the islands, the tortoise rearing center was started. For fifty years the Park Rangers have been working hard to get safely born and grown baby tortoises that they have repatriated to their islands of origin.
The most successful program to grow a wild animal in captivity happens in the Galápagos with the land tortoises, we have repatriated several thousands of these gentle giants back to their original homes.
After a great lunch in the highlands of Santa Cruz, we went exploring the greenery in search of wild tortoises. We found a couple of really shy ones, a pintail duck and a common stilt around the fresh water lagoon, which made the afternoon very enlightening.
At the end of the day we walked around the huge pit craters and searched for finches. We found several of them and we even saw a barn owl. The amazing canopy of the Scalecia forest was one of the highlights of the day.
