Galápagos - Day Four

Today we left the boat after 3 nights and went to the Santa Cruz Island. We visited the Darwin Research Center where they are studying the various island's ecological systems and the impact of human interaction both from the past 80 years and what might lay ahead.  They are stressing to local people how to use native plants to do landscaping rather than introducing imported plants that may have a negative impact. Another area of focus is trying to repair the damages that have been done by over harvesting specific wildlife and the imbalance it has caused in the ecological system of the islands.

We saw the mangroves along the shoreline which helps serve as a buffer for the winds and salty air to protect the other plants. NO, I didn't plant any, YES, I had my hat, and NO, there were no monkeys!

Marine iguanas are specific to the Galápagos Islands. They look sort of like a prehistoric dinosaur or a mythical dragon. They come ashore to warm themselves on the rocks.

Some of the landscape ideas using native plants.

A wobbler

At the research center they have a collection of saddle back tortoises that were brought from another island to help with their preservation. There were only 12 females and 2 males left when they began the breeding process a little over 40 years ago. After some failed attempts in hatching the eggs, they finally figured out what they were doing wrong and achIeved success. To help with the genetic pool, they brought a male tortoise from the San Diego zoo. Today there are over 80 tortoises and they are reproducing on their own.

Looks like E T

This is a land iguana being used in the center's research for breeding.

We later went to an area were the tortoises were in a totally natural habitat and not in a captive environment. These are the dome back tortoises.

To give you an idea of their size I broke this stick to about 1 foot in length and stood it up.

We also saw some ducks 

Cattle egrets 

After lunch we made a brief stop to explore some lava tubes.

This Galápagos barn owl was inside one of the tubes.

That pretty much concluded our visit to the Galápagos Islands. We spent the night on Santa Cruz Island and will head back to Quito tomorrow.