Galapagos - Day 7: Santa Cruz

Today we land at the second largest island in the archipelago (outside of Isabela, the seahorse shaped island), Santa Cruz.  This is where we originally landed by plane as well. It's the most built up island here so instead of zodiac adventures looking for wildlife, we are doing a visit to the Galapagos National Park service and tortoise breeding center. 

The drive over has a good view of the telescoping effect of the landscape (ie, watching as several elevation landscape zones are passed through in quick succession). It was kind of strange being in a bus though -- we've been at sea and on uninhabited islands for so long that the idea of roads and cars was a little foreign feeling!

Here are some shots from the bus of Puerto Ayora, the "big city" of the Galapagos! (Home to 18,000 inhabitants, so big is a little relative). 

We soon arrived at the Galapagos National Park. 

And shortly thereafter, hit the entrance to the Charles Darwin Research Center. Btw, mystery solved, the guides kept saying what I heard as "Charizard" center and I was confused if they named some center after the pokemon, who I think is a fire lizard -- in actuality, they were just saying Charles Darwin really fast and dropping the "win" syllable at the end.

Here's Yeye checking for the resemblance to Darwin -- not bad! 😆 

Once we got inside the research center, we broke off into small groups for the Turtle Path. Here's our guide Christian telling us about the Galapagos prickly pear cactus tree here. I thought it was pretty cool how the tree just curved there at the top and then started growing further upside down. 

The turtle path was shaded by trees growing and bending down on both sides. Not a ton to see, but very picturesque. 

Okay, I guess nothing to see except things we've seen many times now before. But I guess I'll throw in this Galapagos mockingbird. 

The path leads to the Fausto Llerena giant tortoise captive breeding center. But it was cool because there were lots of exhibits along the way talking about evolution, Darwin's personal history, etc. for some reason, I really liked this poster/comment:

If you can't quite read it, it says "if their favorite food is next to the nest, then why fly?" (Explaining why the Galapagos Cormorants evolved to become flightless). 

This breeding center was also the home of “Lonesome George”, the last of the Pinta Island tortoises. When he died, the species became officially extinct.  He normally can be viewed (as a taxidermist) but he was out for maintenance right now. Apparently some California scientists went to Pinta and took what they thought were the last three remaining Pinta tortoises...well....they missed George. So he basically was alone on the island for half a century -- this the nickname "Lonesome George."

Christian also talked us through the three or four tortoise species that are also in danger of becoming extinct -- but there were also some success stories. They were down to like 2 males and 10 females in one species but then located one that was living in the San Diego zoo -- once they brought him back here, he was extremely social -- I think Christian said that 50% of all the tortoises in this species now stem from the San Diego import. 

But onto the real stars: the tortoises! Here are some adult hood tortoises being bred here. Once they reach age 5, they are released back into the wild. I hear these guys can eat up to 80 pounds a day if they are super hungry!

Check out that super long neck. They evolved that way because the plants on their native island were not on the ground (like grass) but instead on shrubs and trees, so they needed longer limbs and necks to reach the food. 

And of course the baby tortoises! These ones are less than 1 year old. 

The juveniles seemed to be eating nonstop during our entire visit. Maybe not that unlike human juveniles...

I didn't quite get the full shot here, but basically the way that tortoises (who are actually quite territorial) fight is not by scratching or biting or otherwise getting physical, they just face each other and then lift up their legs and necks as far up as they can -- whoever is tallest wins and the other guy knows to back down. This was the aftermath of such a "fight" - the tortoise on the right lost and is backing away. 

After we finished touring the research center, we were allocated about 90 minutes before lunch to shop for local souvenirs. No pictures, but got some Christmas shopping out of the way! 

The food at lunch (Bahia Mar) was quite good -- but the real X-factor was the amazing view.

 

After lunch, we went back on our buses to travel up to Manzanillo, a local ranch known for producing coffee and moonshine.  They also happen to be on the migratory route of the giant tortoises of Santa Cruz. Indeed - there were SO many tortoises. They were everywhere -- and even though they don't move very fast, I still had to keep moving to avoid getting in their path!

And they were BIG. (Also can we notice how amazingly lush and green this part of the island is? No color filters used on any of these!)

Baba stayed home today because he seems to be coming down with the flu or a bad cold. So no one was there to prevent me from taking copious amounts of selfies. 

We also managed to watch a mating session - the male tortoise makes a very loud grunting noise when he's mating and Salvador knew that sound so we just followed the sound until we found the pair. This was definitely an animal encounter I won't soon forget!

After the ranch visit, we boarded the bus again. This time, our destination was the Los Gemelos volcanic sink holes. Los Gemelos is twins in Spanish -- as the two sink holes are very close to one another and very similar in size and appearance. 

We also got to get a close look at the Scalesia cloud forest.  These trees are also known as broccoli trees - or Darwin refered to them as giant dandelions. I think broccoli is a better description personally...

The more scientific description: Scalesia is a genus of the family Asteraceae (daisy family) that is endemic to the Galapagos and consists of 15 native shrubs and tree species with six subspecies, earning the genus the Darwin’s finch of the plant world due to its great ability of adaptive radiation. 

After that we boarded the buses again back to the dock to take the zodiac back to the ship. Sadly, Baba is not feeling better yet...hopefully by tomorrow morning though? If be had to miss one day, today was probably not a bad one to miss.