Santa Cruz Island
Galápagos is known to be an enchanted place; an area where the unexpected could happen, and that was the case today. An unexpected event made us change our itinerary a bit and we ended up visiting Santa Cruz Island, the land of the giant tortoises! Our first stop was an area where a couple of geological formations known as the pit craters or the sink holes were found. They were surrounded by a giant daisy forest that created the perfect environment for Darwin finches and other land birds.
Later on we headed to an encounter with the giant reptiles that gave their name to these islands. It was great to see these emblematic animals at such short range, walking and feeding from the immense grass fields where they’ve been roaming for the last couple of million years.
After an entire morning visiting the highlands of Santa Cruz we headed for our well deserved lunch. The perfect location for it was a nice and charming restaurant located in the middle of nowhere, literally!
Our very impressive and stylish looking buffet gave us the necessary strength to continue with our afternoon program. This implied a visit to one of the most important research facilities in the world, the Charles Darwin Research Centre (CDRS). The programs developed in this institute have been responsible for the massive restoration of the endemic flora & fauna of the Islands.
Our day did not finish there: shopping and people-watching became the perfect balance to get to really know a place like Galápagos. The town of Puerto Ayora is the largest in the Galápagos Islands and it is the home to more than fifteen thousand people dedicated mostly to tourism and eco-oriented fishing and it was great to see the well balanced fusion between humans and one of the most pristine areas on earth.
Galápagos is known to be an enchanted place; an area where the unexpected could happen, and that was the case today. An unexpected event made us change our itinerary a bit and we ended up visiting Santa Cruz Island, the land of the giant tortoises! Our first stop was an area where a couple of geological formations known as the pit craters or the sink holes were found. They were surrounded by a giant daisy forest that created the perfect environment for Darwin finches and other land birds.
Later on we headed to an encounter with the giant reptiles that gave their name to these islands. It was great to see these emblematic animals at such short range, walking and feeding from the immense grass fields where they’ve been roaming for the last couple of million years.
After an entire morning visiting the highlands of Santa Cruz we headed for our well deserved lunch. The perfect location for it was a nice and charming restaurant located in the middle of nowhere, literally!
Our very impressive and stylish looking buffet gave us the necessary strength to continue with our afternoon program. This implied a visit to one of the most important research facilities in the world, the Charles Darwin Research Centre (CDRS). The programs developed in this institute have been responsible for the massive restoration of the endemic flora & fauna of the Islands.
Our day did not finish there: shopping and people-watching became the perfect balance to get to really know a place like Galápagos. The town of Puerto Ayora is the largest in the Galápagos Islands and it is the home to more than fifteen thousand people dedicated mostly to tourism and eco-oriented fishing and it was great to see the well balanced fusion between humans and one of the most pristine areas on earth.
