Santa Cruz Island
The National Geographic Islander dropped anchor a little before six this morning as the sun was beginning to light the eastern horizon. In front of the ship lay the port town of Puerto Ayora, a very different morning panorama than what we have been used to up to now. The bustling harbor is always active; boats come in, boats go out, cargo ships unload, barges ferry items in, skiffs zip around the bay, water taxis transport people back and forth.
After breakfast we took Zodiacs into the National Park dock which joins the road leading to the Fausto Llerena Tortoise Breeding Center. Named after the key park warden who has been looking after the captive tortoises for decades, it was the main focus of our visit. However there are many other aspects of interest here, as the Charles Darwin Foundation, who acts in an advisory capacity for park personnel and projects, has its installations in this same area.
But with tortoises on our mind, we spent the next two hours visiting various individuals from different islands, with different shapes and different genes. The hero of the centenarians is “Diego,” named for his exile in San Diego for many years until making his way back (with human help). He shares his enclosure with several female consorts, quite happily, if the number of offspring is any indication.
The other famous individual found here is “Lonesome George,” supposedly the last of his kind from the island of Pinta in the north. He has been kept company for the last twenty years by two females from the northernmost volcano on Isabel Island, Wolf Volcano. Recent genetic studies have shown, however, that these females are not his closest match. They were originally chosen based on morphological similarities, but genetics say something different. Genetics say the two females are in actuality hybrids of Wolf Volcano and Floreana Island ancestry! And here we thought the Floreana race of giant tortoise was extinct…anyway, this January the two females were removed from George’s enclosure and replaced with two females from the island of Española – an island in the extreme opposite end of the archipelago from George’s island of Pinta. We can only speculate on the how the journey was taken by some distant ancestor.
Large ones, small ones, we saw them all before heading along the road to town. A colleague once described this mile as the “most expensive mile in Galapagos,” this in reference to all the shops along the way.
Buses met us in front of the Port Captain entrance, and off we went into the highlands for lunch and an exploration of a large lava tube. Afterwards there was also time to search out tortoises wandering freely through grassy meadows; they were obviously looking for the most succulent of the stems, the most juicy of the leaves, and the rain didn’t bother them in the least. The highlands of Santa Cruz Island are renowned for the presence of a forest of Scalesia trees, one of most iconic Galápagos species of plants found here. It is home to plants adapted to moist, wet conditions, such as ferns, club mosses, orchids and liverworts…a very different ecosystem from what we have seen so far on other islands. This unique forest surrounds “The Twins” (geologic features known as pit craters), and due to restoration efforts by the National Park, is in good condition; it wasn’t hard to imagine the entire highlands covered by these plants, as it would have been pre-discovery by humans.
Back down in town the sun was shining and volleyball was being played in the central plaza – as it is every day of the week at this time when work has finished and there is time for sport before returning home. Seeing the human “face” of Galápagos is important. People are a presence here and the lives of the human inhabitants are intertwined with the lives of the non-human inhabitants. Our job is to see that this can be done in harmony, for the long-term.
