Galapagos, Santa Cruz Island

Day 4 Wednesday October 6

Today is departure day for eleven of the fourteen of us. Only Cindy, Valerie and I are staying on, the rest are leaving for other places, mostly Lima and Machu Pichu. So, I lost my roomie, Steve is gone. He was a good bunkie and a lot of fun. Gone also are the three Canadian nurses, Laura, Laurie and Lizz. The honeymooner are off too, as is the very colourful Texan, Laura, as well as Madge and Chris the two English people I first met in Quito.

The rest of us had breakfast at 7:00. At 8:00 we had a dry landing in the town of Puerto Ayaro, on Santa Cruz Island. Daniel, who is our naturalist guide on the boat, met us and we took a taxi to the Charles Darwin Research Centre. Valerie, Cindy and I had a semi “private” tour with Daniel. We saw the baby tortoise hatchery. There were lots of tortoises of different ages, from one to five. When they are five they release them to the wild. We also saw Lonesome George (the last of his species), some full grown females, large males, and male and female land iguanas. The centre seems a bit tired and out dated, but we had a great visit. All the time during the visit I had “sea legs”, it felt like the land was moving and swaying about!

Then Daniel left us, and we walked back through the town to the harbour. We checked out the tourist shops, and the fish market. This was a small place where a man was cutting up fish and selling them while pelicans were trying to steal the fish and a sealion was rubbing up and down his leg, begging like a dog.

Back on board to load pictures from my camera and Valerie’s while we waited for our new passengers. When they arrived, there were three couples and two single women, so it looks like I have a private room!

We traded 11 people for eight. We added three Aussies, two Americans, Two Scottish people, and a Norwegian.

After lunch we again went into the town and the three of us, with Daniel took a taxi to the highlands of the island to see the tortoises in their natural environment (the others went to the Charles Darwin Centre that we went to in the morning). The giant tortoises live in and around a farm that grows passion fruit and guava fruits. Interesting to see them walking and grazing on the grasses. We saw one wallowing in a muddy pool the same way that elephants and pigs do to protect their skin from insects and parasites.

After dinner, while the rest went to bed weary from travel, Valerie (Aussie), Cindy (American) and I went back to town to have a couple of drinks. We visited three bars and I had a couple of beer. It is a pretty little town (17000) and we feel very safe here. Back on board I went to sleep very quickly.