Santa Cruz Island
This is the best day of the week, as we encounter the Galapagos giant tortoises. Just upon disembarkation in Santa Cruz Island, several male marine iguanas greeted us on the cement jetty, as the cool morning is used by these reptiles to warm up on the path to the Darwin Station. The visit to the Tortoise Breeding Center and the Charles Darwin Research Station continued with a walk along the typical coastal zone vegetation; the first all-green plants we saw were the gigantic Opuntia or prickly-pear cactus, some of the tallest cactus in the world. Then, we saw a variety of Darwin finches, and the local lava lizards. Meeting the real nature of the giant Galapagos tortoises was our goal and for this we started with the juvenile giant Galapagos tortoises, tennis-ball size monsters that were caged along the trail. These animals begin life as small creatures but eventually grow to become giants. In the first corrals the little ones moved around, quite active, some of them just a few weeks old. Within a few years they will be repatriated back to their ancestor’s island and in just a few decades (maybe ten or twelve) they will turn into giants.
After lunch we visited the giants’ environment in the wild. Walking among them and feeling them so close gave us a real perspective of how old they really are, and it was impressive to see them walking among the vegetation, slowly but wisely. A lava tunnel visit was a great way to appreciate the enormous display of energy that our planet can produce from time to time.
There was a lot to learn today, and so a nice dinner on board and the company of good live music with local dancers made the perfect ending of another day in Paradise.
