Santa Cruz Island
Today our guests visited the Island of Santa Cruz, which is located in the central part of the archipelago. In the morning we directed them to the Galapagos National Park giant tortoise breeding center. We saw different corrals where tortoises were reared. Some juveniles were feeding actively on food especially grown in the highlands while others wandered about the lava crusts that make their corrals. Lonesome George had passed away few months ago, making news all over the world. There were two females that lived with him, and they now looked absent somehow. We are all going to miss him deeply; him, and his distinguishing saddle back carapace, typical of desert islands such as Pinta Island, from where he was initially recovered. We will never know how old he really was, or what his wishes were, all we know is that his death was related to his age and perhaps his diet.
The rest of the morning we spent in town, along its colorful streets, until we arrived at a place known as “the Rock.” In this colorful and haunted bar we found filled juice glasses prepared just for us. But why is the bar known to be haunted? The legend says that the owner has continuously encountered difficulties and problems in every single endeavor he has faced, so he tried using candles, feathers and smoke cleansing to cast away spirits. After these things didn’t work, he decided to turn the bar’s huge outside sign upside down – fluorescent lights and everything – in the hope that evil would leave him alone. We don’t know if it’s worked, but he really did not look very well today…
From there we left him and the bar in grief, and we went to a sugar cane mill and had a great time learning the different things one can do with sugar cane. We observed and tasted 150 proof alcohol products. By the time we left, we all looked very different from “the Rock” owner.
After lunch we went to a local farm where Galapagos giant tortoises have been roaming for millions of years. We also explored a lava tunnel; walking inside and finding a barn owl, resting in the lava near the entrance to the tunnel, as part of the landscape. We also enjoyed the plants of the area, especially the flowers.
Our journey on Santa Cruz was one of the conservation highlights of the trip. And that ended another day in Paradise…
