11th November: Santa Cruz and tortoises galore.....

Young tortoises at the breeding centre

Sailed overnight a short distance to Puerto Ayora, the largest town on the south of Santa Cruz island. This is one of the few inhabited parts of the Galapagos and where the Tortoise breeding centre is based. We disembarked and got on a bus to the breeding centre. On the walk in Ramiro told us about the different mangroves and their functions – they are white, red, black and button mangrove all clearly identified by either their fruits, their tangled (or not) roots and their leaf sizes. He is quite dismissive of local and national policy towards the Galapagos and thinks that the needs of the humans are below the native flora and fauna – he’s very radical! He explained that all the tortoise eggs (that can be found) are raised in the centre for all islands and that selective breeding of more females is the norm. This is achieved by raising eggs at specific temperatures as this determines the sex of the hatchlings.  We toured the centre and saw tortoises of various sizes with different coloured markings on their shells which delineated which island they were from, their age and their sex.  At 6 years old they are released back to the island from which they originated.

A large saddle backed tortoise

Sue and Glen, very keen and knowledgeable bird watchers from Yorkshire, told us that they had a tortoise that Sue had owned for 50 years called Herman.  He sounds a real character and seems to buck the trend with reptile behaviour as he recognises them and actually comes to them when called.  He also hates the lawn mower as sees it as a potential rival and we were shown a video clip of him pushing the lawn mower off the grass into the shrubbery.

The tour also included a trek through the gardens which were planted with only native or endemic plants – all clearly labelled, which was a Godsend to TJV.  All the plants were duly photographed and recorded. 

We then walked the mile or so back into town past various souvenir shops and bars/cafes.  We did stop off for a refreshing coconut milk drink in one cafe where we wrote our postcards.  We then had to find the PO where it took ages to buy the very expensive stamps and we were just in time to meet the rest of the group to be pangaed to a hotel just up the bay for lunch.

After lunch, we were boated back to the main jetty to get on a bus for a 25 minute journey up into the highlands (shrouded in mist and possible rain clouds from what we could see) to a farm where tortoises supposedly roamed freely. As we ascended the hillside, the vegetation very quickly became much more lush and “tropical” feeling and the mist soon enveloped us.  We eventually arrived at the farm having spotted several tortoises on route just grazing on grass by the side of the roads. 

Giant tortoises in the wild

We were duly fitted out with wellies and then set off with Ramiro to tour the farm.  He seemed to be going much more slowly than the other guides and we soon got a long lecture about almost anything but tortoises, which C and I found frustrating.  Having told us that the tortoises liked open ground, unbelievingly, we soon found ourselves in a woodland (not unlike an English woodland until you checked out the vicious spines on some of the tree trunks), but even so, we still spotted the occasional tortoise on the open land outside the farm boundary.  Don’t get me wrong - we still saw lots of tortoises looking rather out of place on the open grassland, but I just wanted to have a closer look see like the other groups seemed to be having.

At the end of our walk, we had a refreshing drink at the farm before catching the bus back into town and then the panga back to the ship.  In our absence, our mischievous cabin boy had made a faux body on our bed with our clothes, towels and pillows, which made us all laugh.

We then had the briefing for the next day – again, action packed – and then had a most enjoyable meal before collapsing into our beds.