4. The Tour II: onto Santa Cruz - tortoise time 🐢💚

The day of The Hike

I decided that the hike was not going to be for me so I participated in my own array of activities centred around reading my book; at the hotel, in a cafe and on the beach. I also walked all along the sprawling local Bay of Peurto Villamil, around 1.5 miles in sinky-soft sand, which I suspect is the equivalent of 3 miles’ effort on solid ground. So my walk up the beach and back was not dissimilar to the hike anyway! I spent time every 8 steps or so attempting to take another photo of the marvellous swooping pelicans too. I kept an up on the volcano but I couldn’t see it through the clouds so I hoped the intrepid hikers were having a good time…

Dad’s hike account: journey to the crater.

While one or two, as it turned out, sensibly stayed behind, the rest of the party left at the unearthly hour of 6:45 in our bus with the missing front bumper to climb up to and look into one of the largest craters in the world. Unfortunately, we found ourselves in the clouds and the persistent heavy drizzle soon made us all wet. We kept trudging along, in my case, in squelchy trainers. We battled a muddy path to reach the first viewpoint. Nothing but cloud, or could we just make out some tiny features? Possibly our imagination. The second viewpoint - the same. Once over the rim a bit into the caldera, the path was drier, with stones but still raining. The flora was interesting though with ferns, ‘hairy trees’, cacti etc. The lava the rocks were impressive and there were some amazing colours, lava tubes and eventually at the end of our trail, almost a view. We were greeted finally by a bit of sunshine and warmth and could see across the whole island of Isabela, although still with scudding clouds in the distance. We walked back for a while in a little sunshine and almost dried off before lunch. After which the rain returned and trudging the last few km downhill through puddles and on slippery mud was awkward to say the least. Toward the end of the walk a local bus passed by and from the back our guides waved to us as they went by. It was a relief to see the shelter at the end, and the other bus, this one complete with bumper. Although the conditions were at times unpleasant it was worth all the effort.

We finished up our time on Isla Isabella by sampling happy hour cocktails on the beach at sunset and I introduced Dad to the joy of a mojito then we had dinner in a place overlooking the beach. The next morning, it was another early start transporting bags to and from taxis, piers and through the stone police inspection. Although this time, the guardians of the ecosystem seemed marginally less committed…

Guardian: I’ll just look in the backpacks.

Us: having reassured our guide that no one is carrying a pot plant or any seeds, big bags get loaded on to the water taxi boat

G: points at my bag that I’m opening ready for him to search. Have you got any fruit in there? Stones?

Me: no (not even a lie, I wouldn’t be daft enough to carry contraband in my little rucksack)

G: OK waves me through ….

And we were on our way, all on a narrow water taxi boat that we have to balance equally to avoid capsizing. And with the added hazard of a jenga pile of all our luggage stacked on the front somewhat precariously. Nonetheless, us and all our luggage made it dry and in tact from the water taxi on to the speed boat for a two hour bounce to the final island on our tour, Santa Cruz where we’re staying in Puerto Ayora town. The largest town in Galapagos with around 13,000 residents (there are 45,000 people living just in central Havant, Mum!). We had time just to drop our bags at the hotel and we set straight off on our bus for the day.

Our first stop was to a recycling / up-cycling centre where they are working with local children to raise awareness of the plastic pollution in the sea as well as using rubbish and plastics found around the island to create new products that they can fleece tourists with through their sales. From there, we headed to a reserve with a fancy restaurant. This island has giant tortoises that do roam wild and we were off to try and find some. It turned out that within minutes on our bus, we’d started spotting a few just on the verges of the roads or in the fields beyond, happily munching on the vegetation. Oh, it was magical!

At the reserve, we were shown a cookery demonstration of how to make the local tuna soup before it was served as the appetiser of our three-course lunch! Mostly, I was distracted by watching the massive tortoises roaming about in the background so best not to ask me to ever reproduce that soup although it tasted delicious! Once they’d finally had the good grace to stop bringing out delicious courses of food, we were eventually allowed to put on the wellies they gave us and walk off into the grounds to visit the giant tortoises. They roam wild, coming into the reserve we were in and moving between there and the main national park on the island as they please. They ranged from around 15-20 years old to over 100. The smoother the shell, the older the tortoise, I learned - just like my skin as I age! I absolutely understand that the clue is in the name, but they really are enormously massive! The fully grown large males can weight around 35-40 stone!

Our final stop of the day was to a local farm that has been producing sugar, coffee and alcohol since the 1960s. We saw how the sugar is extracted from the cane - mini Jim Royal did that part of the job, in the absence of a donkey. It is then fermented and eventually distilled into spirit of 100% proof! So it’s a place where you can get a sugar rush, get absolutely battered on moonshine then have a coffee to stave off the hangover! Seems like an excellent business model!

For the final day of our tour, we went out for a few local walks - which, it turned out, amounted to well over 20,000 steps and almost 9 miles of distance. Lorenzo, our tour guide, loves an unfathomably early start so at 7.30am, we set off for a walk to Tortuga Bay. We went through town and along a track to the beginning of the path, climbed up some steps and then wound for some distance up and down sloping block path lined with the cactus trees that prickly pear cactus will grown into when given 100 or so years. Once at the end of the path, we were informed we just had to walk to the end of the beach where we could access a small lagoon to swim in. And the beach was only 2km long … so on we trudged! It was a beautiful beach with crashing waves (and ripping currents that make it unsafe for swimming). At the end were mangroves, the ever present marine iguanas, birds and some sea you could swim in.

In the afternoon, we walked the other way across town and visited the Charles Darwin Research Centre. We heard from a woman who works at the conservancy project WISE (women in sustainable entrepreneurship) to support and train women in initiatives to educate, raise awareness and work in conservation projects. The woman who set up and runs the plastic recycling for art (above) was one of them. Our guide explained that the project works with women because (and I’ll paraphrase slightly here) women are better than men. She also explained that research actually shows that when men are up skilled and trained in something new, they will use it to enhance their own lives and possible that of their family’s whereas women will do that and beyond to support other women and their wider communities. Something that I imagine is only a surprise to around 50% of the population.

From there, we headed up to the main research station where there were exhibitions and information about the different species in Galapagos, the history and current ongoing conservation research and projects. We saw another tortoise breeding programme and some differently shaped giant tortoises, this time from Espanola island. The tortoises there have evolved to have large ‘arch’ shaped neck lines to their shells - this is so they could stretch up and reach up to the vegetation that, on their islands, grew in trees and cacti higher off the ground than the food the dome shaped tortoises ate from ground level on the other islands. Males are all in a pen together and they spend most of their days competing with each other by stretching up their necks to assert dominance and prove they are the best with longest neck. The neck obviously being the appendage of importance in the male of this species.

Easily the saddest part of the day for me was the opportunity to see Lonesome George, a Pinta Island tortoise - the last ever of his particular breed of tortoises who died, after failure to find him a mate, in 2012. The tragic results of earlier visitors and settlers to the islands and their disregard for the species means the Pinta Island tortoises are now extinct. And the man who cared for George for 40 years is the person who the Charles Dawrwin Centre (its commercial name) is actually named after - Fausto Llerena. There may be some some tortoises who cross bred in times gone by and they have George’s DNA, so who knows what they can do in the future - but nothing will quite compare to the historical impact of humans on our world. Lonesome George died of natural causes and initially was stored here while a decision was made on how to preserve his memory … eventually they decided to send him to the USA to a taxidermy specialist. Now he lives in a glass case for visitors to see. I’m not sure if it honours his memory and plays a vital part in raising awareness of the sad story of this giant or something else!

For my final few nights on Santa Cruz Island, we taxied across town to our next accommodation - Lonesome George Eco-Lodge. A quirky and seemingly excellent place with a hodgepodge of rooms, outside space and facilities. Dad is stopping here for the duration with his slightly larger room, small balcony and own private terrace with a view! To my absolute delight, my room is called The Hobbit Hole so is where I’ll be residing for a final few days prior to my dive trip beginning!