Today we woke up anchored at Academy Bay, on the southern
side of Santa Cruz Island where the Charles Darwin Research Station is located.
After breakfast, we disembarked in the town of Puerto Ayora, the largest
settlement of the Galapagos, and after a short bus ride, we visited the captive breeding program of giant tortoises and land
iguanas. Here, we were able to compare the different shapes of shells that
tortoises have to adapt to the different environments of the islands.
The Research Station offers the opportunity to learn about
the many efforts to repopulate species that became locally extinct or are
threatened because of human activity. It is the aim of the national park to
restore these islands to how they were before human intervention. Galapagos has
yet to lose a species and that makes it special in a planet affected by a
massive extinction.
After the visit, we walked the town of Puerto Ayora and took
a bus to the Highlands to visit a lava tunnel and a farm where we saw how sugar
cane, moonshine, and coffee are made. Some of our guests chose to visit a
school funded by Lindblad National Geographic instead. Later we had lunch in a
nearby restaurant and visited tortoises in the wild. It is impressive to see
them roaming the pasture as if they were bison in North America.
The day ended with music and dancing after dinner on board National Geographic Islander. Another
great day in paradise ends.
