Santa Cruz and around
Having decided not to go on a cruise around the islands we based ourselves in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz for five nights and also spent four nights on Isabela. We dived on two days and occupied ourselves on various walks and tours for the other three days.
Puerto Ayora, the main town on Santa Cruz has a definate tourist feel about it, unsurprisingly, but it is a pleasant place, with the buildings being more finished than in other towns in Ecuador, Peru and Boliva. We arrived in the morning and made the most of the afternoon by visiting the Charles Darwin Research Foundation. One of the functions of the foundation is to breed giant tortosies and land iguanas and we were able to wander around a couple of the enclosres of giant tortoises. What amazing creatures, and what a privaledge to be able to get so close to them. In one of the enclosures some catcus leaves had fallen and one tortoise, which we assume to be male, was guarding his food. Certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be at the end of his bites.
The fish market in town was also also an interesting port of call, with pelicans and frigate birds fighting for the scraps. On one day there was also a baby sea lion, which I managed to feed a piece of fish skin too, whilst having a pelican walk through my legs!! Quite an experience.
Our visit to North Seymour island was good. It seemed apt to go on a land tour where we had dived the day before. Our first wildlife encounter was a sea lion and her pup, she had just given birth that morning and the afterbirth was still on the rocks. We were slightly disappointed with the number of birds on the island, we must have been spolit on Isla de la Plata where there were hundreds of blue footed boobies and frigate birds, here, and generally on the islands, there were some, but not as many as we had been expecting. However the land iguanas and marine iguanas made up for it. The marine inguanas especially. Don’t know why, but we found these animals to be the most fascinating! A couple of flamingoes in a lagoon on the north coast of Santa Cruz island on our way back finished the wildlife spotting for the day, don’t know why – guess I hadn’t really ever thought about it, but I wasn’t expecting to see flamingoes in the Glapagos!
We also visited Tortuga Bay, which is a beautiful sandy cove about 30 mins walk out of Puerto Ayora. Couldn’t swim the from the cove, but there was a snorkelling lagoon about 10 mins from it. Not that we were inspired to go in…still defrosting from the diving the day before! We did, however, spent quite a long time just watching the piles marine iguanas (a bit of a habit) – they don’t do much themseleves, apart from sit on the rocks in the sun and occasionally snot out some sea water, so don’t know why we were quite so taken with them! They just seem to put themselves in the most amazing positions, so you have to keep watching them/take photos of them and when walking around you also have to be careful that you don’t tread on them – they blend into the rocks amazingly well!
Tags: Ecuador, Galapagos, Holidays, North Seymour, Peru, Santa Cruz, Travel
Jenni
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