Today we visited the town of Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island. The Galapagos National Park Service and the Charles Darwin Research Station are both located here in the largest town in Galapagos.
In the morning we disembarked at Puerto Ayora and visited the Charles Darwin Research Station, where we learned about the conservation programs carried out in cooperation with the Galapagos National Park Service. More than 700 tortoises take part in the captive breeding program. Some are adults, some are babies, and others are juveniles.
In Puerto Ayora, the tourist industry is the main source of income and we went spent time exploring the shops and art galleries. This nice, well-maintained town is also home to local schools, high schools, and universities.
In the afternoon, we explored the Santa Cruz highlands. The Galapagos giant tortoises are distributed across a large part of the rain forest on Santa Cruz. There is a population of more than 5,000 on this island alone. Today we spotted many giant tortoises, including many large males. We also saw a short-eared owl fly along the trail and we had the opportunity to explore a lava tube. It was raining for a small portion of the afternoon but this didn’t stop us. We got to see how green the islands can be and how interesting it was to walk around the humid zone and the natural habitat of the giants from the Galapagos.
