Santa Cruz
The ‘giant’ day has arrived! This is the land of the Giant Galápagos tortoises. The sun rose early in the morning, and after breakfast we prepared to spend an entire day on Santa Cruz.
Our first activity began in the flotilla of Zodiacs we used to transfer all of us to the headquarters of the Galápagos National Park Service. Here we found the rearing-in-captivity program for baby tortoises of five islands: Santiago, Pinzon, San Cristobal, Española and Santa Cruz.
As we walked into the tortoises pens, we observed several baby tortoises sunbathing and some others drinking water. Today we enjoyed a very pleasant temperature, and these reptiles seemed to appreciate the warmth of the day.
The day continued at the highlands, were we explored a lava tunnel, one of the highlights of this place. This is an impressive geological formation, which took us a good twenty minutes to walk through.
After a well-deserved lunch, we resumed activities, this time, looking for giant tortoises in the wild. We found a good number of these giants, very close of a freshwater pond, some drinking water, some feeding on grasses, while others are already enjoying a good siesta!
Having taken wonderful photographs of these tortoises, we continued to the Highlands to the sink holes, or better known as “Los Gemelos,” these are large magmatic chambers that have collapsed and left these gigantic formations. Right next to them, we found the Scalesia forest, an endemic genus of Galápagos plants and home to the woodpecker finch. We searched for one until we found it, removing the bark out of the tree, searching for worms.
What a great way to end a full day of activities!
