Going into town at Puerto Ayora

Wednesday, March 26, and we get to go in to town. We are all eager to see how the human species lives out here. Puerto Ayora is a cute Mediterranean-looking town on the island of Santa Cruz, with some 25,000 people. I was immediately reminded of Avalon on Santa Catalina Island. There are lots of shops for Galápagos stuff and a fascinating open air fish market. The men preparing the fish for display had to keep shooshing the pelicans away. A walk along the main shore road took us to the Charles Darwin Research Station (CDRS) where we had the opportunity to observe the successful breeding program they have established for he giant tortoises. They had many large ones in their habitat environments, many at least 175 years old. Then there is "Lonesome George." He is the last male survivor of a certain subspecies of tortoise that lived on another island. They have him together with two females, but he doesn't care for either one----and completely ignores them. What to do? The CDRS has tried everything, including trying to get sperm from him in order to impregnate a female and save his species. But

The port

Puerto Ayora's main business is fishing

there is a physical problem that prevents that. When "Lonesome George" dies, his subspecies is extinct. He is one huge tortoise, thought to be 195 years old. Think of what has occurred in the world in that time. We saw lots of baby tortoises, from a few months to 3-4 years old. Once they are about four, they can be released.

Shopping, pit craters, and a tortoise ranch

You'd think we'd never seen shops before! As the group made its way back to town to board buses to the highlands of Santa Cruz, somehow everyone got loaded down with t-shirts, Galapagos tortoise trinkets, and all manner of stuff. And Bob and Val?------we bought an iguana! Check out the picture. It is a hand-painted metal sculpture of a terrestrial (land) iguana. Nope, it's not small. It's being shipped FedEx. Our bus ride took us to a part of the island where magma chambers of ancient volcanoes had caved in forming a huge bowl. Here there are mature trees, flowers, and birds galore. After that we visited the ranch of a Galápagos native islander. It is located in the middle of the tortoise migratory route. We tramped through muddy fields

Main street of Puerto Ayora

It is basically a one street town

in the hopes of spotting tortoises in the wild. We weren't disappointed. It's exciting to come across a tortoise wallowing in a mud pond or just quietly munching on fallen guava fruit. They paid us no mind---one reason being that they are deaf. As long as we didn't tromp heavily, we could approach them very closely. As the day ended we visited some more shops in town and made our way back to the waiting zodiacs. This was a very different day.

Additional photos below

Photos: 18, Displayed: 18

Comment Follow (1) Message

Valerie Hoffman

Valtuff

I am an Education Volunteer at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California. Before this, I taught in Long Beach high schools for 32 years. Now my husband and I are both retired and are spending as much time as we can traveling to witness the variety of countries and cultures on this planet. In the last ten years we have visited many diverse places: Egypt, China, the Baltic countries, Russia, Argentina, Antarctica, Mexico. This is the first time I have ever thought about blogging. Usually everything gets recorded in a trip diary, and good luck if I can find it again when we are sortin... full info