Early in the morning, after visiting the western part of the archipelago, and a long navigation from Santiago, we arrived at Santa Cruz, the second largest island of the archipelago and home of the emblematic giant tortoises. After an invigorating breakfast, we disembarked at Puerto Ayora which is named for Isidro Ayora, an Ecuadorian president during the 1920s. Here, we explored many of the highlights that this beautiful—and the most populated—town offers its visitors. We headed first to the headquarters of the Charles Darwin Research Station where conservation programs are run in order to restore the ecosystems and populations of endangered species. Among the most important program is the repatriation of the giant tortoises to different islands. The giant tortoise breeding program is one of the most successful that has ever been carried out in the Galápagos. Eggs are incubated here and once they hatch the baby tortoises are raised until they are 5 years old, the age they are ready for repatriation. We visited Diego, the most famous tortoise at the Darwin Center and father of many of the tortoises living freely at Española Island. Right beside him, we also viewed the land iguanas’ corral, which is part of another special restoration program in Santa Cruz Island. The southern side of the island is green and the amount of vegetation grows accordingly with its elevation; the highest humid zone is home to large trees and many types of other smaller plants that make up the source of food for the Galápagos giant tortoises as well as for many local birds such as finches, warblers, mockingbirds, and doves.
After our visit to the Darwin Center, we headed to El Trapiche, a farm located at the highlands where guests observed the production of alcohol and sugar, using similar techniques from the 1950s when inhabitants didn’t have electricity, and used donkeys to move the sugar cane press to press the cane and grind coffee. This area of the island has rich soil that allows farmers to cultivate not only sugar cane, but also avocado, pears, papayas, cedar, coffee, cacao and bananas.
After lunch, our mission was to look for giant tortoises as we went higher up in the island; we found many of them, roaming freely along the green vegetation, feeding or resting peacefully under the attentive sight of our curious guests. All these giant reptiles mate and feed on the abundant lush grass typical of the season. Of course, we had a chance to observe a couple of them mating while up there. Plus, some mockingbirds pointed us to the gigantic trees that surrounded that magical place.
