In recognition of this being our final day in the Galapagos the weather is somewhat overcast and there is rain in the air. This morning our final outing is to the Charles Darwin Research Station. We collect our belongings together for the final time to be transported ashore. Some of our fellow travellers are staying for a further 3 days (lucky blighters) and we will be replaced by some new travellers. The rest of us are taken ashore and handed over to a new guide for the morning.
Never mind today we get to see Galapagos giant tortoise. This was to be one of the highlights of the tour. These magnificent animals had almost become extinct being hunted for their meat and their habitats being eroded by man’s encroachment. Fortunately there has been some reversal of this – and the breeding programmes at the Darwin Station are allowing tortoise to be released back into the wild. To our surprise, although we should not have been, each Galapagos Island has it’s own unique brand of tortoise – with 11 different living tortoise variants being recorded. Their carapaces (shells) also vary depending on the type of vegetation on which they feed. Some have carapaces that are tight to their necks, these feed on low vegetation, whilst others come from Islands where their food is higher up and these have a saddle like carapace that allows them to stretch their necks upwards.
Our first stop is to the new hatchling area. Some of these are only a few months old and it is difficult to believe at this stage how these will grow into the huge giants they will become. Mind you they live to be about 200 years old so they have plenty of time to get there. In the first enclosure of the adult tortoise we come across the famous Lonesome George – purportedly the rarest living animal. He is the only surviving giant tortoise from the remote island of Pinta. Sadly all attempts to try and breed George have failed. We move on the other enclosures and are lucky enough to be able to go into the male enclosure where you can get within inches of full grown male tortoise. Truly a wonderful experience!Now it is time to leave. We find the rickety bus that will take us across Santa Fe Island to the ferry to Balta Island where we will meet our plane. Although it is not sunny the weather is humid and with a bus full of bodies the temperature and levels of discomfort rise. Finally our luggage is all strapped securely (at least we hope it is ) to the roof of the bus. We travel inland from the fairly temperate and dry lowlands into the highlands of the island which is more tropical. Here we pass farms and banana plantations. We do get one treat – the site of wild giant tortoises on the road side. Eventually we summit the highlands and pass onto the other side of the island, and are greeted by the sun for the first time today. After a short ferry crossing and bus ride we reach the airport – which was a grim as we remembered from our memories of a few days previous.
Karen had thought this was the end of our try – however more was planned and instead of flying back the States we were going to Peru. Our plane landed in Lima, early evening and we were met by our tour guides and transferred to hotel, Antigua Miraflores, in a trendy part of town. It was a little too late to find a restaurant and we were pretty tired, so instead we walked to a super market bought some food and ate on the patio area outside our hotel room.
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