Day VII- January 8th, 2oo7
Another 5.45AM wake up- finished up packing, breakfast and off the boat.
Our first stop on Isla Santa Cruz was the Darwin Research Center. We walked the hot sunny trails until we arrived at large pens where land reptiles were kept. There were female pens, male pens, pens for different species. We were able to walk through and watch them eat and move around. Many of them were upwards of a hundred years old. It was impressive to see how large they really were (all we had seen at this point were the shells of dead ones!) It was also sad to see them all caged up. Even sadder to see were the land iguanas with nowhere to run- and even worse, all separated with only a little window for them to communicate with each other, especially after seeing them all happy in the wild the previous day!

Meal time for the turts


mmmm... this guy better enjoy it- they only get fed every 2-3 days. Although, that's actually a lot considering it takes 2-3 weeks for it to pass through their system!


Steven Spielberg was supposedly inspired by these tortoises for the image of E.T. after his visit to the Galapagos- see any resemblence?

The lady tortoises were quite pretty- look at those eyes!

We saw Lonesome George (the last known kind of his species) who the people of the Research Center bring other species' females in to mate with him. But either he has never known how to procreate (all his other kind were dead by the time he reached a fertile age) or he's just too depressed and unable to.
They are supposedly holding his DNA for the future in hopes to perhaps clone him or if a mate is ever found. As for now, the park has a $10,000 reward going for a female friend for Georgie.

Poor George! 40 years and not a single one of his kind!

Another part of the center collected tortoise eggs, incubated and raised hundreds of tortoises until about 4 years of age until they were ready to be released into the wild.

All the little babies.

It's kind of ironic that the Darwin Research Center (Darwin= father of evolution, natural selection, survival of the fittest) would intervene to the extent of eliminating predators. I understand that they are trying to undo the damage we did to their population from hunting, poaching and capturing- but in a way, we are natural predators too...
After the Research Center, we were dropped off at the port where we caught a water taxi to the other side. We hiked a 5-minute trail to our hotel -Finch Bay Eco Hotel. We all ran to our rooms, threw on our bathing suits and jumped in the absolutely amazing pool.

The port



Matt relaxing in the hammock- we all got one outside of each of our rooms!


Aaaah, a little bit of paradise.

Nearly the entire group acted like kids for at least an hour- Marco-Polo, Colors, Olympic Style Races. We had lunch and swam some more. Afterwards, we waded around the bay for awhile- watched some fish, marine iguanas...

I shared some of my lunch with the birds- they eat right out of your hand!

A big bird landed while we were exploring the bay



Little bird in the mangroves

That little guy in the corner's doing flips!

A few of us decided to go for a hike to 'Las Grietas.' It was extremely hot out, but we decided to make the most of it.
The trail started from the back of the hotel, trailed up a hill and into a salt mine (!!) . I was very excited about this. The shallow water was a milky pink color and salt was piled high in corners of the many pools. I personally thought it was very cool- although I am aware that I am a dork. But how many people can say that they've seen a real, functioning salt mine.

The salt mine

We got to walk through the brackish water. Isn't that a cool picture?

The path we followed went by a row of houses. There was even a bar at one point in what looked like a completely uninhabited area. Salt mine by day, bar by night.
Moving on, we walked up lava rocks, past a huge sink hole, through a green colored pond where we found different birds fighting over a crab, a bright red snake, and along the whole path, there were random pairs of flip flops just laying around.
We climbed up a big hill, expecting to be completely disappointed (considering the terrain was so dry and basically ugly looking). We finally ran into a big sign informing us that we had finally arrive at Las Grietas and a history behind it:


It was a fissure (grieta) where the lava rocks had split apart and a mixture of fresh water from the island and salt water from the sea had filled the cavern.
We found a set of man-made wooden steps and at the bottom, we found ourselves completely surprised. The water reflected a calm, beautiful blue unlike anything I had ever seen before. We were all completely amazed. We wandered down the rocks closer to the basin of the water. We could see beautiful fish swimming near the surface.

Las Grietas

Being so hot from our hike, we knew we had to go swimming. We all stripped down to the clothing we didn't mind getting wet and eased ourselves in- a little aprehensive to the things that we could not see below. The water was cold and crystal clear. We swam the length of it, until rocks blocked our way to the next basin.

The cavern was too dark to get really good shots- but the fish were all really brightly colored and different looking.


Some crazy adventurers

We decided to head back, still scared of what could be under us. The cavern was at least 30ft to the bottom. The entire thing was rather eerie- the fact that there were flip-flops lost the entire way, there was a watch alarm sounding beneath the boulders where we entered the grieta, there was no echo in the cavern because lava rock is so porous, everything was very dark and there was no one else around.
We got back to where we started, dried off the best we could and continued our way back to the hotel, proud of our find. We jumped in the pool once more, showered, and got dressed to go for dinner in town. We had all met up at the bar and tried the "Blue-footed Boobie" - the drink of choice at Hotel Finch Bay.

Some of the ladies with their Blue-Footed Boobies

It was a large group of us heading out- following the trail back to the port, to the water taxi to town. Once we got there, it was frustrating to all pick out a place at which we all wanted to eat, then finding a place that could actually, and willingly, seat nearly 20 of us was nearly impossible. Then there was the whole idea of feeling like an intimidating group of Americans- the whole thing really frustrated me and we wound up spending only a little while in town before I wanted to come back. It had been a long day and I was very, very tired, sunburned and wanting to leave.
We found our way back and called it a night.