This morning we woke up at Academy Bay. My home island, Santa Cruz, the second largest in the Galapagos Archipelago, holds nowadays the largest population, around 20,000 people live here. Puerto Ayora, is a nice cozy town and we are
Lunch today was served at Narwahl Restaurant, a place surrounded by an incredible garden, wonderful weather and a great meal! Right after that we headed towards El Chato farm, located right at the boundary with the Giant Tortoise Natural Reserve, it is always very important for our guests to have enough time to observe the giant tortoises in their natural habitat. Here the tortoises are looking for fresh grass, we could observe the different ages of the animals, as they get old they increase in size and weight; they can reach 400 or 500 pounds.
Once on board, after dinner our guests were delighted with a live show, local musicians were invited; we all enjoyed the great Andean and Galapagos music. Today we were happy to see that humans and Nature can coexist, Galapagos shows that sustainability is the key for conservation! And the adventure is to be continued…
After a short break at the Rock Café, our gathering area, our guests boarded the buses, which brought a good number of them to “El Trapiche’ farm and the most adventurous ones decided to reach the place using mountain bikes. At El Trapiche we learned a lot about agriculture, as the owner of the place, Mr. Adriano, is always happy to show his farm and put “Angelito” the donkey right to work to show how sugar cane juice is obtained, he offered a tasting of brown sugar together with roasted coffee beans, delicious bananas, cheese, syrup, and sugar cane alcohol!
We visited the giant tortoises breeding Centre ran by the Galapagos National Park Service and some facilities from the famous Charles Darwin Research Station; only through the close work of both institutions the Galapagos Islands have been able to be sustainable and there is much more work to be done. It was overcast during the morning, but the sun slowly tried to get through the clouds: excellent conditions in order to learn about the emblematic animals of the Islands: the giant tortoises. Our guests learned about this program from our naturalists and after that walked through the town and had the opportunity to buy handicrafts and take pictures at the busy fishermen’s market.
