Santa Cruz is one of only four inhabited islands in the Galapagos with the majority of people (18,000 in total) living here. We visited the island at the start and the end of our trip.
On the first day we entered the National Park where we were going to walk with Giant Tortoises. Now we have both seen many tortoises in our lifetime, but these were simply enormous!
It was incredible to walk with these giants, many well over 100 years old and one even 160. Morris, our naturalist and guide, was extremely knowledgeable and told us all about the island and the tortoises. At one point their numbers dwindled dreadfully low, due to human poaching (whalers and sealers over the last three centuries) as well as various predators introduced by humans many years ago, such as black rats. However, humans also intervened to help save the Giant Tortoises by raising them in captivity and releasing the young tortoises back into the wild once they are old enough to fend for themselves.
One of the oldest tortoises on the island, Diego, had fathered about 50% (or roughly 900) of the tortoises currently roaming the island, so single-handedly contributed to the strong numbers we see today. He is now known as “Super Diego”! We visited the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz on our last day and had the opportunity to ‘meet’ Diego. At 120 years old, he still has the energy to mate four times a day!
Super Diego is actually quite small considering his stamina!
We also saw a very rare and fascinating display – in response to the Darwin finches’ solicitation. Surrounded by a couple of finches, one of the Giant tortoises raised its body and stretched its neck to allow the removal of parasites and loose skin by the finches. Through this symbiotic relationship, the finches receive food and the tortoise a cleaning.
A tortoise waiting for finches to clean him from parasites
The Giants had one more ‘show’ in store for us… From the bus we saw two tortoises mating, the male on top of the female rocking back and forth and making a very strange howling sound. It was quite late in the season and most tortoises have already mated and the females headed to the beach to lay their eggs, so we were very lucky to see this.
Back in town we had half an hour to walk around before our dingies would leave for the boat. Derek and I wanted to buy more sunscreen, so we went in search of a pharmacy.
I was admiring the view of the boats in the harbour and the late afternoon sun in the background when Derek called me. Over on wooden tables a few of the local fishermen were selling their daily catch – amongst a begging and clearly very hungry crowd of pelicans! The pelicans were everywhere, desperately waiting for some of the offcuts to be tossed their way. It was brilliant and quite funny to watch!
