We started off our day today by heading to the Guayaquil airport at 7:45. We got to the airport and had to get all of our bags checked for any items like fruits and seeds that aren’t endemic to the Galapagos Islands. We then got on our plane to go to Baltra Island which is a part of the Galapagos Islands. Once stepping off of the plane in the Galapagos Islands I was already so amazed and overwhelmed by how beautiful it is here and I continued to be amazed as the day went on. We took a bus from the airport to a small ferry that would cross the Itabaca Canal and take us over to Sana Cruz Island.
Our first stop on Santa Cruz was the Los Gemelos which are two twin sink holes on the island. These sinks holes were formed when bubbles of gases under the ground started to disappear which then caused them to sink year after year. These sink holes are still sinking tills this day.
Our next stop of the day was at El Chato Ranch which had many cattle egrets, introduced cattle like cows, and tortoises. Here we ate lunch where all the sides were open so birds were flying in and you could see the giant tortoise in the distance. We then went and walked through a lava tunnel. There is no light in the lava tunnel we went in, but you could hear the raindrops dripping which meant that eventually that lava tunnel would collapse. In the lava tunnel there was no life inside, there were no plants, no animals, nothing, because there is no light.
After the lava tunnel, we walked around and looked at the giant tortoises!!! We actually learned how you can tell the difference between a male and a female tortoise as well as the age. Male tortoise has a thick and longer tail, whereas female’s tales are smaller, and more cone shaped. When fully grown female tortoises are smaller in size than the males. To tell the age of a tortoise you can actually look at the rings that they have on their shells, and the shinier and less rings there are the older the tortoise is. I was so excited to see the tortoises and to learn so much about them that I didn’t even know!! We then went to our hotel, checked in and then headed to our next spot.
After the lava tunnel, we walked around and looked at the giant tortoises!!! We actually learned how you can tell the difference between a male and a female tortoise as well as the age. Male tortoise has a thick and longer tail, whereas female’s tales are smaller, and more cone shaped. When fully grown female tortoises are smaller in size than the males. To tell the age of a tortoise you can actually look at the rings that they have on their shells, and the shinier and less rings there are the older the tortoise is. I was so excited to see the tortoises and to learn so much about them that I didn’t even know!! We then went to our hotel, checked in and then headed to our next spot.
We then took a five-minute boat round across the ocean to another part of Santa Cruz. Here we did a short twenty-minute hike to a place where there was a crack in the lava rocks which was called Las Grietes. There was a decent amount of water there so people could jump in and go swimming and snorkeling, but we arrived too late, but we still got to take pictures!! We stopped at a beach on the way back and went swimming. It was so crazy to think that we were swimming in the Galapagos Islands!! We then headed back to the hotel and go ready for dinner. On our way to dinner we walked through town in Santa Cruz and it was so beautiful. After dinner we had a presentation from Isabel Timpe who works for the Charles Darwin Research Program and focuses mainly on ocean acidification. Her and her team are in the process of doing an investigation at Roca Redonda which is a volcano in the ocean by Isabela. The interesting part about their investigations is that they are not done in labs, they are done in the ocean, so you do not have to make really any assumptions because you are in the actual ocean. When doing this investigation, they dive in 5 different spots and record pH, total alkalinity, and dissolved and organic carbon. As well as those three recordings, they take random pictures every five meters, to analyze what species are present.