Today we visited the second largest island in the Galapagos, Santa Cruz.
This island is the economical heart of the archipelago as most of the people who work in the tourism industry live in here. Also because of the location of the island, the Charles Darwin Research Station and the National Park Service have built their headquarters to help with the conservation of the species found here.
In the morning we visited the corrals where the iconic giant tortoises are being reproduced and their offspring are held until they reach maturity to be released. There are a couple different species of this kind, and we could see their gigantic size. Also we saw some land iguanas in their pens, where they will help us with the breeding of their species.
Later some decided to go shopping in town while some preferred to have a look at how the Galapagueños live in such a beautiful place.
Santa Cruz is a large island full of traditions, so we went to the highlands to visit a little farm called Trapiche. This place cultivates sugar cane to later produce brown sugar, molasses, and moonshine.
As we wanted to use our time on the island better, we stayed in the highlands and moved to a restaurant where we had lunch and afterwards took a bus to visit our final site of the day.
There are a couple places on the island that have modified their farmlands in order to let tourists come and see giant tortoises in their natural habitat. This time we saw bigger tortoises than in the morning, but this time in the wild. Some of the tortoises here had just arrived looking for some green places to find food after this dry year in the archipelago.
It was yet another wonderful day exploring the islands of the Galapagos.
