We woke up anchored at Academy Bay of Santa Cruz Island, the second largest of the group of islands and also the economic capital of the province of Galápagos.
Early in the morning after breakfast we headed into the main dock to reach Darwin Station by a short bus ride through the town of Puerto Ayora, the largest of the province with about 15,000 people.
Getting off the Zodiac we walked into the national park area for the visit to the giant tortoise breeding and rearing program facilities, which started to operate about four decades ago with the mission to bring some of the tortoises species and also some land iguana populations back to stable numbers from almost extinction. Special attention has been paid to the Pinta Island giant tortoise population, whose only survivor was kept here for many years in hope of recovery. Sadly all efforts were finally in vain as he has since passed away, leaving no descendants.
We continued our expedition to see more giant tortoises, especially the one from the island of Espanola which, after years of predation by pirates and whalers, came near to extinction and had only fifteen individuals left alive.
One male named Diego lived in California, so named after the San Diego Zoo where he spent many years. Now the population is substantially increasing into the thousands. It has become one of the most successful breeding projects that has been carried out.
Finally we meet the future generations of tortoises. They are very small to begin with, and then after five years of growth, we send them back out into their natural habitat. Now we have time for shopping! This very unique town has a great sense of tourism and actually end up giving a percentage of their money back to the conservation projects. This helps the people’s economy in a very sustainable way which also helps to the conservation of the precious place we are blessed to be in.
From there we boarded a bus that took us to a local sugarcane press where we were able to try the juices of this sweet juicy plant. We were also able to try local coffee and chocolate-covered coffee beans and to purchase these wonderful products.
Finally we went to a restaurant in the highlands for lunch. After this break we boarded the buses again, this time to look for giant tortoises in the wild. This is a exiting part of the expedition because at this time of year they can be seen in the area eating grasses that are quite abundant due to the regular mist at this elevation.
The vegetation is also impressive as this area is cultivated by local farmers, and large trees paint the scene.
We returned to town after this fantastic excursion and then went back aboard. Another adventure has concluded successfully.
