Day 7 - Santa Cruz

This morning, we went to the Charles Darwin Research Center, which is another giant tortoise breeding facility. We saw some more baby tortoises -

and there were also some enclosures where we could go in and see the tortoises close up.

and we got to see Lonesome George, who is the last of his particular tortoise species. The scientists have ben trying to get him to breed with tortoises of similar species for a long time, but nothing ever comes of it.

At the Research Center, we also saw our only land iguanas of the trip. No clue why they are yellow, but they look neat.

This guy wanted to get at the iguana in the next enclosure

We then got to take a walk through a lava tube. It was essentially just an enormous underground cave, but there was one section that we had to "crab walk" through on all fours. For some reason Yoel was the only one who ended up covered with mud from that part.

We then went to go look for some giant tortoises in the wild. The breeding centers have been so successful that they have been able to introduce a good number of tortoises back into the wild.

On our way there, we had to make our way through a wall of cows.

Once there, we went on a walk, and found some tortoises in the wild, but these ones were obviously more wary of humans.

Near the preserve where the wild tortoises lived, there was a little place where we rested afterwards and got some coffee. They also had some empty tortoise shells there, so the smaller members of our group got to try out life as a tortoise.

Kate as a tortoise

A tortoise who is curious of her surroundings

After lunch we took a loooong walk to get to Playa Mansa and Tortuga Bay. The walk would have been nice and pretty, since we got to walk down a path lines with cacti, and we saw some finches, but it was at least 100 degrees at that point, so we ended up pretty bedraggled by the time we actually got to the beach.


There were some people surfing on this part of the beach, but our guide spotted a shark in one of the waves, so we decided against jumping in to cool off. We took a walk down this beach to Tortuga Bay. When we got to Tortuga Bay, we took out some sea kayaks, and headed for some mangroves along the side of the bay to look for sharks. We were able to find the place, and encountered what looked like 10-15 white tipped reef sharks that swam around under our boats. On the way back to shore, we also saw a sea turtle swimming under our kayak.