This beautiful island scenery that surrounded us today is Academy Bay on Santa Cruz Island. Our destination was the national park, and we will be encountering the iconic Galapagos giant tortoises! In the morning we visited the Charles Darwin Research Station, the giant tortoises’ breeding center, and the giant tortoises’ corrals.
Many of the tortoises we saw at the breeding center are tiny babies; they were born here as part of the tortoises restoration programs carried out by the Galápagos National Park Service. Eventually, all of these little tortoises will be repatriated to their home islands, where they will spend the rest of their lives. For tortoises, this may be a life of more than a hundred years, and hopefully they will have many babies!
At the end of the morning, we boarded our buses and we headed to the highlands of Santa Cruz. There are many attractions on this side of the island: The green forest, the birds, and the majestic Galápagos giant tortoises. An encounter with these large gentle reptiles is an unforgettable experience.
Here in the cool highlands we explored the cloud forest and the flat grasslands. This region is green throughout the year, and it is home to many of the native and endemic species that are distributed in the Galapagos, such as Darwin’s finches, mockingbirds and giant tortoises and many types of plants.
It’s estimated that there are more than 5000 giant tortoises living on this island!
