Today we arrived to the second largest island in the archipelago, Santa Cruz, the island with the largest human population. This is also the home for the Charles Darwin Research Station and the breeding center for Galapagos giant tortoises.
We began our morning by going to the breeding center. We walked to the different areas where we observed and learned how to breed Galapagos giant tortoises in captivity and we also got to see a small group of Galapagos land iguanas that are kept as a “Bank of Seeds,” as those reptiles are better bred in semi-captivity.
As we kept looking at these amazing reptiles we also found some Galapagos mockingbirds, yellow warblers, Darwin finches, and Galapagos fly catchers representing some of the land birds that exist on this island. At the end of our morning we took some local buses and headed into the highlands to a local farm. There, we learned about the locals’ ways of living and the way they produce local coffee, alcohol, and other products with the materials they find available in their area.
After the farm we got on our buses and headed to a local restaurant to have lunch. We found this place to be quite unique because all the lush, green vegetation that surrounds the place, as well as the unique decoration of the place itself. We left the restaurant and drove to a nearby farm where we looked for Galapagos giant tortoises in the wild. At this time of the year the land tortoises are breeding and nesting in the lower areas of the island, so we encountered several females, males, and juveniles.
At the end of the afternoon we returned aboard and after dinner we had a fun evening with a local band of musicians that played music from Ecuador and Galapagos.
