Santa Cruz
The guests told me during breakfast that there had been some “rock and roll” on the National Geographic Islander last night; personally I slept great and did not feel a thing — I guess I’m a pretty good sailor after all these years! Our guests were full of eagerness and energy this morning as we boarded the Zodiacs and prepared for our visit to the largest town in the islands, Puerto Ayora. PA, as it is often called, is the home of the headquarters of both the Galápagos National Park Service and the Charles Darwin Research Station. We disembarked on the National Park dock and followed a cement tile paved road into the Darwin Station. Our Naturalists, Greg, Aura and Jeffo, lead us along a boardwalk to view giant tortoise babies and adults that are part of a captive breeding program that has been turning out endangered tortoises since the mid 60’s and has been extremely successful.
After an interesting walk through the CDR Station, we made our way down town, following the road along the coast and checking out the many colorful shops and boutiques where there were items to satisfy everyone’s tastes and budgets. The fish market attracted the most attention: there were pelicans and sea lions begging for scraps and many of us shot numerous photos of this amusing scene. We gathered at “The Rock” café for a drink of pineapple juice and then boarded buses to the highlands for lunch and our afternoon outings.
At “Rancho El Chato” most of us climbed down steep steps into a pitch black lava tunnel; luckily we had brought along our flashlights and so, moving in slowly, we made our way into the underground tunnel. The Naturalists explained how the lava tunnel was formed many hundreds of thousands of years ago when a lava flow crusted over and the molten material within it flowed on out. We scrambled up and out of the tunnel and to our delight found a hearty buffet lunch waiting to be consumed.
After lunch I had 10-year-old William crawl into a huge, bony, empty tortoise shell to get his picture taken, and for the next 15 minutes many – particularly, but not exclusively, the kids – got their photos taken wearing a giant tortoise shell. We then returned to our buses and travelled further up the island to visit “Los Gemelos” Scalesia forest and pit craters. This daisy forest is unique to Galápagos and among its greenery we located several species of finches and plants of interest. There were tiny orchids and a woodpecker finch was an especially good find!
By bus we drove to the farm of a long time Galápagos resident where we were thrilled to find dozens of giant tortoises! Tortoises were slowly feeding, some were slowly walking, and others rested or soaked in a pool of water. They were not in any hurry — having at least 150 to 200 years to live — and neither were we; we took countless photos of these huge and amazing reptiles.
The buses took us down to PA where some of us chose to return to the ship and others decided to spend more time (and money?) in town. Christmas dances, displays and music in the main park were entertaining, and later we were entertained on the ship by a local group of musicians and dancers. We headed off to bed after the music show, tired but content, after another fabulous day in the magical Galápagos Islands.
