We woke up anchored at Academy Bay of Santa Cruz Island, the second largest of the group of islands and also the economic capital of the province of Galapagos.

Early in the morning after breakfast we headed to the main dock to reach Darwin Station by a short bus ride through the town of Puerto Ayora, the largest of the Province with about 20 thousand people.

Getting off the Zodiac we get on buses to take us closer to the park for the visit of the Giant tortoise breading and rearing program facilities which started to operate about 4 decades ago with the mission of bringing some of the tortoise species and also some land iguana populations back to stable numbers from almost extinction.

One male lived in California, his name was Diego, and so named after the San Diego Zoo where he spent many years. Now the population is substantially increasing into the thousands. It has become one of the most successful breading projects carried out by a national park.

Our free time in town allows guests to get to know more about the lives of the Galapageño people, and to do some shopping, too. We all meet at a nice open air restaurant in town called La Roca before departing to the highlands of Santa Cruz.

First we stopped to see a local farm called EL TRAPICHE where the owners show us how they live on the islands without essentials like energy and plumbing and how they learned to make things to live.  They make brown sugar, melazas, coffee, moonshine and more. It was a very entertaining visit.

We continued our journey to a nice restaurant where we enjoyed good food along with good refreshing drinks.  After this we prepared for departure, this time to look for the enigmatic Giant tortoises that have adapted to living in certain elevations of the large islands with moisture and grass. They certainly are almost everywhere in this area, so we can take pictures and even study them a little bit as they are calm and relaxed.  After enjoying the giant turtles we  explored a lava tube as there are plenty in volcanic islands like Galapagos.

It was certainly a phenomenal day in the Galapagos!