We first stopped at La Loberia. 'Lobo marino' is the local name for the sea lions. On this beach we found the marine iguanas and many sunning sea lions. We saw mostly babies--the mamma's having 'gone fishing'. Wilmer Jr said the babies were about 5 months old. They were as cute as the marine iguanas are ugly.
Then we drove up into the mountainous area, through 'El Progresso' (a small town where there was once a sugar cane processing plant). The weather got progressively cooler as we climbed into the highlands (about 4,500 feet).
We stopped briefly at El Elecurio, the 'wind farm' for San Cristobal. This is 3 large wind turbines, which is supposed to provide 50% of the electrical needs of the island. One justification was to reduce the amount of diesel fuel needed to power the local generators, thereby reducing the probability of a fuel spill that would endanger the ecology. (This was after a large ship grounded on the reef and broke up just outside the harbor, causing much concern over the possible negative effects). We didn't actually get out of the car and see the turbines, but we got a picture of the sign.
Next was a brief stop at El Junco, which is a large crater lake. Since there were low clouds, we decided to defer the hike until later, hoping for more sun.
Then we stopped at El Tortuguero (more officially known as the Cerro Colorado Tortoise Conservation Center. Here they have a Visitor Center, a breeding facility, and an interpretive trail with real live Galapagos Turtles. We got to see an incubation rack, with fist-sized turtle eggs, and some turtle babies. We saw 'Genesis', the first hatchling to survive the 2005 hatchling program. And walked the boardwalk thru the scrub and saw semi-wild Galapagos Turtles in their semi-natural environment.
This center was created both to increase the survival rate of baby turtles, as well as proving a place that was easier for tourists to go to to see the turtles. Prior to this, it was a $200 pp boat ride to the north end of the island, to see Galapagos Turtles in the wild. Between 3 of us, with 3 digital cameras, we probably took 300 turtle pictures. Here's one:
The last stop on the road was Puerto China (China Beach). This is a nice beach with a little surf, where we went 'snork-surfing'. We had lugged all our snorkling gear all the way down the beach, only to find a fairly large surf. The snorkeling wasn't great due to the turbulence of the water, but the beach was nice, the body surfing was pretty good, and we did see 2 sea turtles swim past and at least one sea lion.
On the way back, we stopped at El Junco again, and this time trekked up to the crater lake, which was still shrouded in fog. There is a 1 hour hike around the crater lake, but we were a little bit on a schedule (and a little tired), so we opted not hike the rim. The cloud we were in was thick enough that we could just barely actually see the crater lake. It must be something when the sun ever shines.
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