Purplelake: Day 7 - Jul 30, 2018 Isla Santa Cruz, Galapagos Islands

We had to wake up super early this morning at 5:00a to take the speed boat back to Santa Cruz. Before we started our journey, everyone was talking about a mysterious sinking of a speed boat last night at the harbour. We saw the sunken boat and that did not add to our confidence of our trip! The ocean was actually calmer today than our boat trip to Isabela. However, as we approached Santa Cruz, the sky turned cloudy and then started to rain.

We got picked up by Dale again and taken to our first night hotel for breakfast. We were surprised to see the hotel was full to capacity, very different from our first night there. Then we were taken to a different hotel (Hotel Palmeras, not as good) for our two night stay. We met our guide there and walked to the Darwin Research Station for a tour. We were joined by an Italian couple who were on honeymoon to Peru and Galapagos. This station is focus on giant tortoise research mostly although they claim to do other stuffs as well like marine ecology. It is a more elaborate facility than the one on Isabela. We learnt that all the big islands like Isabela and Santa Cruz and San Cristobal have tortoises with dome shaped shells but on all the smaller islands like Floreana & Espanola, tortoises have saddleback shaped shells. This is because the smaller islands do not have the high mountains to create wet climate and are very dry. Therefore, the vegetation is higher and the tortoises have to evolve to a different shape to allow them to stand up to eat the high plants. We also learnt that male tortoises have concave shell in their bellies.

The underbelly part of the tortoise shell. This is one way to tell the sex of tortoise - concave and convex. Q: Does male tortoise have concave or convex underbelly?

Baby tortoises in their playpen! The mesh cover is used to prevent rats from eating them

The afternoon highland tour was led by the same guide. We saw lots of giant tortoises roaming in their natural environment. This is the best chance to observe these animals close up. They make very loud breathing noise. Coincidentally, we were joined by another Italian newly-wed and they also picked Peru and Galapagos for their honeymoon! After the tortoise ranch, we went to walk inside a lava tunnel. Part of it was so narrow that we had to crawl on our tummy!