J on the Flip Side: Penguins, Giant Tortoises, and Sea Lions, oh my!

The Galapagos are really fascinating islands. They are volcanic, so most of the terrain is composed of black volcanic lava rocks, with really sparse vegetation including a lot of cacti. In parts it feels more like you are on the moon rather than on a tropical island. A few of the volunteers and I took last weekend off and went on a trip to two other islands, Santa Cruz and Isabella. We had such a great time!

We saw SO many animals. First, on the boat we saw an eagle ray jump right out of the sea, followed shortly by some type of shark, visible only by its two fins drifting alongside our boat. When we got to Santa Cruz, we went to the Charles Darwin Research station (my hero!) where they breed the Giant Tortoises for reintroduction into the wild. It was really cool to see the baby tortoises, juveniles, and all the way up to a few big (well, giant actually!) adults. Hopefully some of those juveniles will be released into the habitat that we are working to rehabilitate on San Cristobal in a few years.

We took a tour to the highlands of Santa Cruz as well, where we saw Tortoises in the wild! It was so exciting. They arent scared of humans at all, and just go about their business of relaxing in tall grass, eating fruit, and being cool while you (and by you I mean me) do a little happy dance and see how close you can get to take pics and just observe them doing their giant tortoise thing!

On Isabella Island we saw my favourite!!! Galapagos penguins were swimming around in the harbour as our boat sailed into port!! There were even sea lion babies playing and swimming with them as well. Then we saw about 6 stingrays glide by in the crystal clear water, and noticed a few marine iguanas lounging on the beach. Blue footed boobies were hanging out on the shore, and we could even see sea turtles sticking their heads out of the water! There was one spot in a narrow channel where we saw tons of white tipped reef sharks just hanging out. I was in biology nerd heaven.

The next day we did a 20 km hike up to the crater of one of the islands active volcanoes, which last erupted in 1979. It is actually the 2nd largest volcanic crater on earth so that was pretty cool. Half of it was shrouded in morning clouds and looked really spooky when we arrived. But the day cleared off and we continued to another series of smaller craters and lava fields of black, red, yellow and ochre lava flows and stony earth. The only vegetation to be seen was giant cactus trees, so it was totally other-worldly.

Here are a few pics...