Today was to be our most metropolitan day of the trip - spending the day in one of the few towns in the Galapagos - Puerto Ayora. We were to spend the day at the Charles Darwin research center learning how they are protecting/preserving the giant tortoises (primarily). Then we were to head to a coffee plantation and finally a protected tortoise feeding area to take pictures of tortoises. Lots of tortoises today!
At the research center, the team was hard at work breeding/raising baby tortoises from the endangered tortoise species that were still not breeding in the wild. I didn’t inquire on the details, but it sounds like there are still quite a few species where the numbers are still too small for them to breed naturally. My mother informs us that when they were here a decade ago, the research center was still incubaiting eggs with a hair dryer… The center we saw was quite large/impressive and it seemed like they were doing a lot of great work.
One of the most fun things we saw was the baby tortoises. These little guys are tiny when they are born and it takes them 4-5 years to grow big enough to where they no longer have any natural preditors (except humans). The research center raises some of them until they are that old before releasing them and others they release right away (depending on the number in the wild for that species).
Seeing all of the different species in one place, you could really see the difference between them. The tortoise below (for example) has a really high shell opening that allows him to reach higher into the bushes/trees where his food is. Some of the other species that eat grass don’t have that pronounced shell opening. These two were doing a little mating dance - the female decided she wasn’t into it and headed the other way.
We also saw the taxidermied remains of lonesome George - a tortoise who was the last of his species. He refused to mate (likely due to his age) and so his species ended with him. I read an article about how they were looking at cloning… so maybe there is hope!
After the research center, we headed to the coffee farm. This farm was run by a man and his wife/sisters and was growing quite a few things in addition to coffee - although Galapagos coffee has a premium and sounds like it took care of most of their earnings. They were the first farm on the Galapagos to do hydroponic farming - primarily to preserve water it sounds like. They sell a lot of this food to boats like national geographic as it turns out.
After the farm, we headed to lunch - which happened to be on a farm which was a favorite spot for tortoises. We went out into the field with some big boots (to protect from the fire ants) and got some great pictures of the tortoises eating/wandering around in the field.
Giant tortoises can reach 200ish years old and one thing we learned about is that when the reach the age of 90-100 years old, their shell stops growing. The growing shell gives them those distinctive rings on the different sections of the shell and so after 90-100 y/o, the shell starts to degrade. The tortoise below is a good example, you can see the chips/dings start to show and the distinctive rings have mostly faded away. This was one old tortoise!
We headed back to the boat after the tortoise field for the normal ritual of daily recap and briefing for tomorrow - our last full day in the Galapagos!