Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos, Ecuador

Our first stop in the Galapagos is the most populated island Santa Cruz and we stayed in the biggest town Puerto Ayora. Santa Cruz is bigger than the island of Maui but it still only has 20,000 fulltime inhabitants. Many people that visit the Galapagos do it on a liveaboard small cruise ship (usually about 16 passengers, often catamarans). After looking at the prices ($600-3000 per day), we knew we were going to do it by staying in a hotel in town and doing our it our own way. We also weren’t sure we’d love being in such tight quarters. We were able to take a few day tours and did a lot of walking so we were able to see the wildlife that we wanted to see and still stay on budget. While I can say that the Galapagos is one of our bucket list items, I never actually thought this is a place we would get to. It really seems so exotic. The sea lions greeted us when we got off the boat and if you were near the water in town, they always seemed to be something to step over. They took over the benches and docks and anywhere they could get some shade. Galapagos sea lions are not as big as our Stellar or California sea lions and way calmer. They didn’t fight each other or bark much like you see in San Francisco or Newport, Oregon. It still took a couple of days before I felt comfortable walking next to a sleeping one. They are even safe to swim and snorkel by them.

The Galapagos is also famous for their giant land tortoises. We took the tour of their hatching program at the Charles Darwin Research Center on our first day and later in the week we saw them in the wild on a day trip into the hills. The tortoises prefer old cattle farms because of the long grassy fields and ponds. It was really cool to see so many that you can just walk up to and take a picture. Although, they aren’t that exciting to watch. It is kind of just like watching cows. On the highlands tour, we also saw some old volcanic craters and then walked through a lava tube. The lava tube was similar to the Ape Caves near Mount Saint Helens in Washington State except here they installed lighting through the entire 1/4 mile tunnel.

We took a local bay boat tour one day and another day took a snorkeling excursion to Pinzon island. The water was really clear in places and it we saw lots of fish, turtles, rays, marine iguanas and a couple of sharks. The sea lions were hanging on the shore and didn’t feel like swimming with us that day. M had bought me a waterproof case for my phone and I spent a lot of time trying to get the best pics.

We did do a lot of walking to some lagoons and beaches. We are on the equator and it is very humid so we were always dripping in sweat and worried about getting sun-burned. The landscape is a lot of cactuses trying to grow in volcanic rocks that don’t provide much shade. It just makes you feel tired and sticky/sweaty a lot of the time, but it was worth it to see a lot of wildlife in the lagoons and along the beaches.

We saw a lot of wildlife during the week and everything seemed so accessible. The sea lions, sea turtles, marine iguanas, and land tortoises all just seemed to ignore us. We were excited to see the famous blue footed boobies which I thought were going to be rare but were just as plentiful as the pelicans and frigate birds. I saw several endemic bird species that are only seen in the Galapagos but my life list didn’t really go up that much. I saw 25 species with 14 of them being new to me. Looking forward to seeing flamingos and penguins on the next island. I have a lot of animal and bird pics and I am not going to be shy about posting way too many here.

Next stop is Isabella Island in the Galapagos. The Island is 5 times bigger than Santa Cruz but only has a tenth of the people. Looking forward to swimming with sea lions and penguins!