Today we woke up at Academy Bay on Santa Cruz Island. It was a beautiful morning with blue skies and a nice warm breeze. The sea was still and there was a beautiful view of Puerto Ayora with its colorful houses and sailboats anchored in the bay. Our destination today was the Charles Darwin Research Station and Galapagos National Park facilities. This was the day of the Galapagos Giant tortoises!
Many of the tortoises we saw at the breeding center are tiny babies and they were born here as part of the tortoises’ restoration programs carried out by the Galápagos National Park Service. Eventually all these little tortoises will be repatriated to their home islands where they will spend the rest of their lives. Maybe over the next hundred years they will have many babies!
The afternoon program included a visit to the rainforest in the highlands of Santa Cruz. Here we explored the forest and the flat grasslands with tortoises. This greenery is home to many of the native and endemic species of creatures that reside in the Galapagos, such as Darwin’s finches, mocking birds and giant tortoises and many types of plants.
It’s estimated that there are more than 5000 giant tortoises living on this island!
