Sur America: Galapagos (Part 1, Santa Cruz)

Hello friends and family, it has been a while since we last posted, mainly because we have been busy in the Galapagos (and internet is not so good here). Instead of doing one gigantic post on the whole of Galapagos we will split it up between the three islands we explored.

Isla SANTA CRUZ (Puerto Ayora)

We flew into the island of Baltra, just north of Santa Cruz and separated by a small channel, which we had to ferry across. The airstrip was an old US Airforce base back in WW2. After going through customs, baggage check, paying our Galapagos National Park entrance fee of $100 (each), and getting on to Santa Cruz proper, we still had a 45 minute truck taxi ride to Puerto Ayora (PA).

We met an Ecuadorian guy that was on vacation in the Galapagos and had just missed his flight so we headed back to PA and he had a few things he still wanted to do, and insisted we tag along. After shleping our bags over to the Darwin Hostel, and eating a quick set lunch (at a place Nico recommended) we joined him at the docks and took a short lancha ride to the other side of the bay/port where we hiked to Las Grietas. Las Grietas is a large crack in the island that has a good bit of water (salt and fresh) mixing from underground sources. There are rock walls on either side and we jumped in, snorkeled around and enjoyed exploring for a bit. After this Nico, our "guide", wanted to head out to Tortuga Bay for some surfing, so we tagged along again. Tortuga Bay would be a place that we visited at least once every day we were on Santa Cruz. Tortuga Bay is really two beaches, one for surfing, and running apparently and the other is much more relaxed in waves and attitude. There are marine iguanas everywhere on the beach (they really look like minature dragons), you have to be careful not to step on them! And we found later on that there were actually green sea turtles making love in the calmer bay, basically turtles riding piggy-back in the water ;)

Day two we decided to check out the Charles Darwin Research Center. It was free and we heard that there would be some giant tortoises there at their breeding program. There was a bit of good information in the "Center" but it was pretty spread out, I think the Giant Tortoises was the highlight, although it would be a sweet place to do research!!! On a quick, sad note: we just missed seeing the longest lived (they think) and last specimen of the Pinta Island subspecies of giant tortoise, Lonesome George. They tried getting him to mate with some "strange other island" lady tortoises but he was either too tired, old, or just didn´t like the looks of them... He passed away in July of this year..

After the research station and a bite (PB&J sammies) we headed off to Tortuga Bay again as we were not able to get to the smaller, more secluded bay as the park was closing down. We brought our snorkels but the viz wasn´t the best, lots of kicked-up sand. We did see some turtle love, lots of fishes and a few white tipped sharks through the haze. This day we also had our first offical boobie sighting!! We took this as a good omen as it was Ellyn´s birthday and a special day for Dave too! This one just stared at us as we walked by, wondering how many pictures we were going to take. We retreated into port to satiate our grumbling stomachs and met up with a Norwegian trio we had stumbled into earlier that day. Kasey, Luke and I all had burgers of somekind (chicken and churibon), while the Norwegians (Maria, Therese and Mike) ate pizzasa.

Day three started out with a planning session to get the most out of our time in the Galapagos. We had heard about three places in the interior of the island that we decided to check out: Los Gemelos, Lava Tunnels and Rancho Permiso. We hired a taxi truck to shuttle us around. Los Gemelos are two massive craters that look more like sinkholes. They were two of the "vents" for the main magma chamber that made Santa Cruz, and after the magma was all gone the remaining cones sunk into fill the chamber, making big sinkholes. Our next stop was the Lava Tunnel. We had brought head lamps but didn´t need them as it was lit the whole way, and it was walkable except for a squeeze point that we had to belly slide into the next chamber/tube. It was a pretty large diameter tube and must have held a lot of lava at one time. There was a second tunnel but it was not lit, we explored a little bit but didn´t feel too safe going very far. Our taxi man then drove us to Rancho Permiso, a tortoise reserve where they let the giant tortoises roam free, and people walk amungst them. We had a fun time hanging out with these amazingly big, tanks, and I really enjoyed watching them mow through grass in a very slow deliberate manner, as they watched us intently, exhailing loudly if we got too close. (Tortoise poo was everywhere too). This place also had an awesome tortoise shell that you could climb into, my only regret was not standing up (it would have been very heavy..) and becoming Donatello. After this inland tour we headed out to Tortuga Bay again, as a day would not be complete without a trip out there. As hunger called us back in, we found our way to the street lined with restaurants and filled with chairs and tables. It´s a great place to try the local fare without paying too much, I think I got Carne Apanada and Kasey got a fish dish, yummy!