It is always very encouraging when you hear guests tell you that the day was beyond their expectations and that they cannot wait until tomorrow to see what other surprises we have prepared for them. Today was a very fulfilling day. 

Our morning started with a visit to the Galapagos National Park Service Tortoise Breeding Center and the Charles Darwin Research Station facilities.  A flagship project for both institutions is the Galapagos Giant Tortoise Conservation program, which aims to restore of tortoise populations throughout the Galapagos.  These iconic reptiles were at the brink of extinction due to overhunting by pirates and whalers, competition for food, or predation from introduced animals such as goats and rats.  The GNPS and the CDRS have worked very hard since the late 1960s to increase their numbers, and they have been very successful in doing so.

There are two varieties of giant tortoise: one that roams the high humid highlands and has a roundish carapace, and another one that inhabits dry, low islands, and has a shell that resembles a riding saddle.   They are known as dome-shaped and saddle-back giant tortoises, and we saw them both today at the GNPS tortoise corrals.

Towards the end of the morning, we boarded buses and moved on to visit an old-style sugar cane farm where raw sugar and moonshine are made in an artisanal and traditional fashion, the main grinder being powered by a donkey.  Our guests could taste the organically grown coffee and drink recently squeezed sugar cane juice—with or without any moonshine in it. 

After a delicious lunch ashore, we went out to look for giant tortoises in the wild.  Santa Cruz is home to the second largest population of the second largest species of giant tortoise in the Galapagos.  We were not disappointed.  Despite the drought we are going through, there were many giant tortoises around, either seeking shade or taking a mud bath to cool down a little bit.  Everybody got to see them!

Bird-watching didn’t let us down either.  Several Darwin’s finches were spotted all around us, as well as Galapagos flycatchers, yellow warblers, white-cheeked pintail ducks, common gallinules, and cattle egrets.

After a long day, we headed back to the National Geographic Endeavour –a little tired, but very happy.