Kathi's Boringly-Named Blog: G8: CDRS & El Trapiche, Santa Cruz (10/1/13 AM)

Welcome to October! I wore a pink ribbon shirt today in honor of my 10 years of survivorship and breast cancer awareness month.

This morning we landed at the Galápagos National Park landing on Santa Cruz Island and walked to the Charles Darwin Research Station. The CDRS is the home of the giant tortoise breeding program, a significant and successful program to restore the various subspecies of giant tortoise to their home islands. In addition, scientists work here to gather accurate data about the various species that make their home in the Galápagos archipelago and to advise the National Park on appropriate conservation and management processes.

Greeted at the dock by Santa Cruz marine iguanas--note the green color along the crest on this adult

And a young one, too

Endeavour waits patiently--the crew of 70+ making everything wonderful for us when we are on board!

One of the station buildings... more under construction.

Our first stop was the pen of the domed giant tortoises. Many of these males were collected from private owners (in some cases, they were pets!) and are unable to be released into the wild, but some of them are part of the breeding program.

Then it was on to the saddleback giant tortoise enclosure, home of Super Diego, the Española giant tortoise who was found at the San Diego Zoo in 1977, flown first class on American Airlines to Santa Cruz, and put to work siring hundreds of offspring to repopulate Española, bringing that population of saddleback giant tortoises back from the brink of extinction.

See how much more "open" the front of the shell is compared to the domed tortoise shell. These tortoises do less ground feeding in the wild and more feeding on shrubs and cacti.

Kevin in front, Super Diego in back

A less successful story involves "Lonesome George", the last of the giant tortoises from the island of Pinzon (Pinta). Although several attempts were made, first to find a female of his subspecies, then to mate him with females of closely related subspecies, none of the clutches of eggs that were produced proved to be viable. With his death in 2012, his subspecies went extinct.

Our next stop was to see the Galápagos land iguanas, also part of a breeding and reintroduction program at the CDRS.

And we circled around to find the giant tortoise "preschool" for young tortoises aged 1-4 years (at which point they are moved to their respective home islands) and the "nursery" for those less than a year old. The tortoises' shells are marked to indicate when they hatched and which subspecies they are.

"Preschoolers"

The "nursery"

As we completed our walk around the station, I snapped a few more photos.

This is not a tree trunk, but the trunk of a prickly pear cactus.

I was not able to identify this bird.

Nor could I identify this flower.

Kevin & I had some time to walk through the city of Puerto Ayora, population about 15,000-18,000, depending on your source. All the groups from the NG Endeavour met at a bar/restaurant called The Rock and after a refreshment break, we boarded buses for the highlands.

We walked past this cemetery, which reminded me of New Orleans.

Fresh fish market

It's lobster season!

Brown pelicans and a lava gull, hoping for a snack!

Looking up the main street, Av. Charles Darwin

Beverage break at The Rock

We visited El Trapiche, a traditional farm (sugar cane and coffee). We toured their operation, tasted their wares, and just enjoyed an opportunity to interact with the local "Galápagueños". Let's see, the cheese with thick can syrup was delicious, as was the sugar cane candy. The moonshine was really strong, but the coffee (with brown cane sugar crystals) was fantastic (I bought some to bring home--I will enjoy a taste of the Galápagos on some cool morning in the not-too-distant future), as was the cane juice with fresh sour orange squeezed into it.