HOME > TRAVEL > 2004 > ECUADOR > ISLA SANTA CRUZ

Isla Santa Cruz : Galapagos, Ecuador : Trip Report

Charles Darwin Research Center

With our last dive of the trip out of the way earlier in the morning we proceeded to the southern part of Santa Cruz Island where the town of Puerto Isidra Ayora is located. This town is the capital of the Galapagos Islands and also the home of the Charles Darwin Research Station. The Research Station is also a museum/zoo of Galapagos wildlife. This is where we would go to finally see the giant Galapagos Tortoise, albeit not in the wild.

We boarded the panga and crossed the bay to the research station, about a mile from downtown. There we viewed various exhibits about how the islands were formed, how the wildlife got there and evolved into their current amazing forms.

The highlights were by far seeing the Tortoises. The ones on display here are for one reason or another unable to be returned to the wild. The research station has a very active breeding program to re-stock the islands that have their native species still in existence with self sufficient supplies of these massive creatures. It's unfortunate but several species have already gone extinct and the saddest example is Lonesome George, the last of his species from Isla Pinta. There have been attempts to get him to mate with other similar species but so far he has refused. There is a desperate search of the world's zoos in the hope that a female of that species can be located somewhere. Fortunately he's still very young (in his 20's) and the giant Tortoises can live to more than 170 years old.

I wonder if their "relaxed attitude" has something to do with their extraordinarily long lifespan?
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Around Puerto Isidra Ayora

We spent much of the rest of the afternoon and day exploring the town. We walked along the main road back into town. Melanie was determined to find a Whale Shark T-shirt and even though the road was lined with T-shirt shops nearly the whole way back we were unable to find a single T-shirt with a Whale Shark on it.

Once back in town we scrambled to get our Internet fix at a very nice Internet café after 10 days at sea and away from just about any sign of civilization. It felt good.

Since we were going to be docked here for the night we had the option to return to the boat for dinner or be on our own in town. We unanimously chose to stay on dry land and eat in town.

We had dinner reservations at La Garrapata (The Tick) for all the guests on the boat as well as our divemasters at a nice restaurant in town. Before that a few of us stopped for a drink at a small bar on Charles Darwin Street and were surprised to find a parade come through town and basically stop right in front of the bar. We found out later the parade was hastily organized to help the powers at be to make the right decision when it came to the talks taking place over the fishermen's strike. Apparently the fishermen wanted the limits on Sea Cucumber fishing to be removed completely and there were several alternate plans on the table, including shutting down all dive operations and giving only the fishermen permission to run diving in the Galapagos. That's a very scary proposition. We too hoped that sanity would prevail.

I later spoke to someone knowledgeable about the situation and that tourism (including diving operations) are about 100 times the economic impact of the fishing and if the fishermen would prevail not only would that mean the end of diving now but probably forever as it would lead to the destruction of the very fragile and unique ecosystem surrounding the Galapagos Islands.

At the end of our trip the following me we disembarked in Puerto Ayora and had a nice bus ride across Isla Santa Cruz. We made a brief stop in the National Park to view two huge sunken volcanic craters. We then continued to the north end of the island and took a ferry to Isla Baltra where we took another bus to the tiny airport.
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Getting back to the Airport

The last monrning we took a rather long bus ride across Isla Santa Cruz back to airport on Isla Baltra and made a quick stop at some sunken craters in the middle of the island.
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Next Section: The journey is over but you can find links to great books and other websites in the Reference Library.