Santa Cruz Island
At six-thirty in the morning we dropped the anchor in Academy Bay at Santa Cruz Island; and shortly afterwards we landed to visit the headquarters of the Charles Darwin Research Station. At this site we could see the giant tortoise rearing program, step-by-step, from the little newborn babies to the ones that are about to be released into the wild. In addition some big adult tortoises and land iguanas were seen.
We had a successful morning of learning about the emblematic symbol of the Galápagos Islands, the giant tortoises. After our visit to the Darwin Station, our guests had some free time to spend in town. It was the first time during the trip they were walking on a populated island, many went shopping, some others relaxed in a café enjoying the nice view and discovering how people live in such a unique place.
At around eleven o’clock we started to board buses to go to the Highlands of Santa Cruz for our lunch at a local restaurant but before that we made two different stops on the way. The first stop was to try a traditional alcoholic drink called agua ardiente and some sugar cane juice made in an artisanal way and the second was to walk through a huge natural lava tunnel.
After all of these activities we had a well-deserved lunch to recover some energy, and after that we went on a giant tortoise hunt in the highlands. The vegetation was so different than the vegetation of the other islands, very lush and green, this phenomenon occurs because of the different altitude that brings more humidity for all the plants of the area. Many tortoises we found were eating the abundant vegetation.
