Today we arrived to the island of Santa Cruz, which is the second largest in the archipelago. We anchored in Academy Bay on the southern end of the island. Here is where we find the largest human population and the main headquarters of the Charles Darwin Station and the Fausto Llerena breeding center for Galápagos giant tortoises. As we landed at the National Park dock some Galápagos marine iguanas in mating season colors greeted us. From here we made our way towards the breeding center where we saw the juvenile giant tortoises that are kept until the age of four years old when they will be released on the island of their parents’ origin.
At the end of our morning, we went to the town of Puerto Ayora and had the opportunity to explore it on our own. After this great time in town we met at a local restaurant and headed to the highlands where some of our guests went biking, while others went to a local school. For the rest of us we had a great chance to go to a local farm where the traditional way of processing the sugar cane into alcohol has been well preserved. This small farm also has a coffee plantation that is grown organically and its beans are well-selected, dried, and roasted and then exported to other countries.
After the farm we went to have lunch at a restaurant in the highlands, from there we took our buses and went looking for Galápagos giant tortoises in the wild; we observed several females, males, and juveniles of all sizes, in all we probably found more than forty in the area.
We returned to our ship after an incredible day on Santa Cruz Island.
