Santa Cruz Island
Today we arrived to the second largest, yet the most populated, island in Galapagos. Santa Cruz is home to the headquarters of both the Galapagos National Park, and the Charles Darwin Research Station.
After breakfast we landed at the National Park’s main dock to go for a walk through the rearing center of giant tortoises. Our guests were very happy to see this program step by step, from the new born hatchlings that just came out of the incubators to the ones that were almost ready to be repatriated back into the wild. Shortly after our visit in the rearing center of tortoises, our guests were offered some free time so they could walk through town to shop and see how the Galapagos locals live. In the late morning we took buses to go to the highlands of Santa Cruz for our lunch. On our way to the restaurant we made two stops, one at el trapiche, a sugar cane mill; and the other at a huge lava tunnel.
After our lunch we went in the search of the chelonoidis nigrita, which is the endemic species of tortoise from Santa Cruz. We were very successful, finding many. It was very special to see them in their natural environment feeding. They let us very close. It’s amazing to think that some of them could have been over a hundred years old.
