Once we got the shopping done, Scott and Dave and I walked out to the Charles Darwin Research Station. This is operated by the Charles Darwin Foundation, which is an international not-for-profit corporation dedicated to research and preservation of the Galapagos as a World Heritage Site.
There we visited more turtles, including the famous 'Lonesome George'.
George is the last remaining turtle of his sub-species from a particular small island. They have been trying to get him to mate with females from other similar sub-species, with no success. They had a breeding program similar to San Cristobal, and also some land iguanas we had not seen before. A lot of their effort is based on trying to keep invasive species out of the Galapagos (and eradicating those that have already been established.). For example, the wild goat and wild cat populations, brought by former settlers, cause the turtles big problems. Likewise, non-native plants crowding out the native plants, are also very bad. So there were exhibits on those issues as well.
Next, we hired a taxi driver for $10 an hour to take us around to the sites in the highlands. These tours normally cost $50 per person, but with our Spanish, we made do with a spanish-speaking taxi driver who knew all the places. Over the next 4 hours we toured the cooler highlands of Santa Cruz. We drove through the towns of Bellavista and Santa Rosa and later, the tiny town of Camote.
First we stopped at Los Gemelos (The Twins), a pair of collapsed lava craters, interesting enough for a 5 minute walk and a few pictures.
Then we went to a 'turtle ranch' and Lava Tube place, at Rancho Primicias, near El Chato Turtle Reserve. We opted to pass on the turtle ranch--we have already seen more than enough turtles. But it was neat driving in, with giant Galapagos turtles hanging out on the side of road munching on grass. The lava tube was pretty cool, essentially a very long cave... where a shaft of lava ran... the outer shell cooled and the inner lava kept going, leaving the long tube.
Finally, we drove out to Garrapatero, which turned out to be just a nice beach with some marine iguanas, kayaks for rent, picnic tables, etc.
By the time we got back to Puerto Ayora, we had spent almost exactly 4 hours. So our 'highlands tour' cost us only $13 per person instead of $50. (Moral: Keep studying your spanish!)
We arranged with our taxi driver to pick us up at the water taxi dock in the morning, to take Scott across the island to Baltra, where the airport is. It is possible to do this trip with a short taxi ride and a bus, but Dave and I wanted to ride along to see more of Santa Cruz, and make sure Scott got to the airport OK. Doing it by bus would have taken us all day, so we opted for a $30 R/T taxi ride (about 45 minutes each way), with Scott paying half the cost. We left Scott on Saturday morning at the Baltra Ferry Dock--a short ferry ride and a short bus ride to the airport. It would take him 2 full days of traveling (with an overnight stay in Guayaquil) to get home to Austin.
On Saturday afternoon, we went with the crew of Visions of Johanna to see Las Grietas. To do this we took a water taxi to the Hotel Finch dock, opposite the town, and walked 3/4 of a mile over rocky terrain. We weren't sure what Las Grietas was... thought it was a snorkeling place, so we lugged all our snorkel gear along. It turned out to be a fissure, or grotto, filled with salt water, but not on the ocean. Kind of like the local swimming hole. A little underwhelming, but the price was right.
On the way back, we tried to stop at Hotel Finch for a beer and a swim in their pool, but they requested that we spend at least $10 per person, so we left without a swim.
There are a few more tours that are possible in Santa Cruz--and a lot of full day boat trip excursions. Plus some SCUBA diving. But the harbor is really rolly, boats are jam-packed in there (mostly live-aboard Galapagos tour boats). The swell forecast was still such that no one wanted to pay $120-$160 for a scuba trip. So we left with s/v Visions of Johanna on Sunday for Isla Isabella.
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