giant tortoise – Nannie RaRa

We next went to Puerto Ayora, the main commercial port on Isla Santa Cruz. We boarded a bus to take us to the Charles Darwin Research Centre. Among other research, is a program to breed giant tortoises. We saw lots of young ones that had hatched that year.

They are released when they are about five years old onto the island they originally came from. The program has been so successful that this year, 2023, is the last year they will need to breed tortoises from Santiago island as the species has recovered.

We then went on a 4/5 km bike ride on the public road. I had to push my bike up several of the hills but my grandson did them all easily. We ended at a local sugar cane mill.

They had a hand mill for crushing the sugar cane.

My grandson and another person had a go at turning the wheel to crush the sugar cane. The farmer has been growing and producing sugar from sugar cane for over forty years. He now has a mechanised method for crushing the cane which halves the production time.

The farmer then showed us the tin bath where he leaves the sugar to ferment for a few days before running it through a still to produce moonshine at about 55% proof.

He threw some of the liquor on the fire to show us its strength.

We all got to try the moonshine – it was a lot smoother than I expected. We bought a bottle to bring back with us.

The farmer also grows coffee and cocoa. He showed us how he prepares the coffee beans and also the cocoa.

We had lunch at a natural tortoise reserve in the highlands. The giant tortoises wander freely in their natural environment. The landowners have to keep spaces in their fences for the tortoises to get through if they want to – similar to our hedgehog tunnels in the UK. We saw about 30-40 giant tortoises wandering about, some as old as 100 and some youngsters of about 20.

We then stopped at a lava tube where a barn owl was roosting. The barn owl just sat there while we took photos and wandered past.

The lava tunnel was not very long but the steps at the far end had loads of spiders sitting in their webs. The guide walked ahead brushing them away so by the time I got there it was quite clear. My grandson who is rather tall had to bend down to stop him getting cobwebs and spiders in his hair.

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The next day we made two stops at San Cristobel Island. The first stop was an early start with a walk at 6.30 in the morning. The ships are allocated dates and times when they can visit places to ensure the islands are not over visited.

Our walk was to find the red-footed booby which only lives on a couple of the islands. San Cristobel is one of the oldest islands in the Galapagos and our path was among the rocks.

We found several red-footed boobies including a fluffy white one on its nest in the bushes.

A pair of the red-footed boobies were sharing sticks on their nest.

There were some blue-footed boobies as well and a Nazca booby. There were several finches and more frigate birds flying around.

We came back to the ship for breakfast and collected our gear for deep-water snorkelling. We saw brightly coloured fish, a sea turtle, and a ray – sea lions swam around us.

We saw a goat on the cliff while we were snorkelling. Goats were introduced onto the islands by sailors, hoping they could use them as fresh food next time they visited. Unfortunately, they have now become a pest and there are regular culls of them.

In the afternoon we went to the Cerro Colorado Tortoise Reserve in the highlands of San Cristobel. The reserve is breeding giant tortoises and releasing them back into the wild onto the island they originally came from.

The population of giant tortoises was almost completely destroyed as the ships used to take tortoises for food. The tortoises would last for months on board without food or water so were easy to maintain. If the ship got into trouble, the tortoises were just jettisoned overboard. There are now 11 species of giant tortoise, down from the original 15, but their numbers are recovering due to the breeding program.

The sanctuary has tortoises wandering around in semi-captivity as well as those growing up. These tortoises were saddlebacks. They have long necks and when fighting each other, extend their necks and the longest neck is the winner!

We saw lots of yellow warblers.

A feral cat came near and the warblers flew to the tree tops making a huge noise. There was a mocking bird around but it was hard to see.

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Tag: giant tortoise

Galapagos adventure – Santa Cruz

Galapagos adventure – San Cristobel