Galapagos-Santa Cruz Island
Our first day in the Galapagos was awesome! We're staying on Santa Cruz Island and we went to see the giant tortoises in their natural environment. We went to a private ranch which was high (1800'alt.) in the middle of the island. I was surprised to find out that there are a lot of farming and cattle ranches on the island. On the long drive into the ranch we saw rows of banana trees, papaya trees, and coffee plants all growing together. These private ranches are also on national park land, so the tortoises roam freely without the ranchers bothering them. The ranches allow tourists to come into their ranches for a small fee ($3.00). The land was thick with tropical rainforest type vegetation and it was difficult to find the tortoises in among all the plants. Our guide/taxi driver was good at finding them, so we slogged after him through the muddy marshland looking for tortoises. It's marshy because it rains nearly every night. We found quite a few and they were huge! Most of them were around 80 years old, according to our guide. I couldn't get used to seeing them in this lush forest environment because I think of tortoises as being in a dry desert environment. But it was wonderful to see them in their natural habitat instead of in pens. After this, our taxi driver took us to a big lava tube that we could walk through. It was bigger than I expected at around 20-30' high and wide, and about ½ Km. long. It was fun, but slow going because there were pools of water, slippery mud and rocks, and big boulders of lava to navigate around and up and over. Also it dripped on our heads constantly. There was one low area in the middle where we had to crawl on our hands and knees to get through, and then it opened up big again. Next our taxi driver took us to see "Los Gemelos" or "The Twins". They were 2 craters, about the same size and about 100 yds. apart. All of this and it was only mid-day! So we went back to our hotel for lunch and after lunch our driver took us to a nice beach. It was about a ½ mile hike to the beach, but it was worth it. It had fine white sand that was cool to walk on and beautiful turquoise water that was warm for swimming in. At the end of the beach was a lot of lava rocks creating a small lagoon and this is where we saw our first saltwater iguana, resting on the rocks. We had a full day with a lot of great activities. I can hardly wait to see what tomorrow brings.