Onboard the Xpedition

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Puerto Ayora - Santa Cruz
Cerro Dragon - Santa Cruz
This morning the ship headed for Puerto Ayora, the main town in the Galapagos; it lies at the opposite side of Santa Cruz from the airport. Over 20,000 people actually live in the Galapagos, and you can use the Internet here. There were two activities this morning, the first one visiting the Charles Darwin center and viewing the tortoise raising area and Lonesome George, a 180+ year old tortoise, the last of his subspecies. The other activity was going to the highlands of Santa Cruz and seeing the tortoises in their natural habitat. It was supposedly raining today in the highlands, so we opted for the Darwin center. We would be returning to Puerto Ayora on Saturday, so there was a second chance to go to the highlands. The Charles Darwin center is on the edge of town, buses were provided to shuttle us there, then we would walk back to the port. The center had several tortoises of varying age; they try to raise them here until they are a few years old then release them in the wild. This is to protect the eggs from feral pigs which are quite a problem on many islands. That afternoon, we sailed around to Cerro Dragon on the other side of Santa Cruz. The options here were to go on a Zodiac ride and look for golden rays among the mangroves, or walk to the top of Dragon Hill, looking for land iguanas and possibly flamingoes. I did the walk but didn't see much today other than lots of land iguanas and a feral goat, another problem on the islands. The Zodiac ride turned out to be the better deal here, they saw a school of golden rays and a shark.

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