Jorge met us at the hotel, Casona
de la Ronda, at 7:15 for the 45-minute ride through hilly terrain to the
airport. The flight to Guayaquil and then to the Galapagos airport on San
Cristobal island was uneventful. While waiting at Puerto Baquerizo Moreno for a
dinghy – a rubber raft with a 50-hp Yamaha outboard motor, also called a Zodiac
– to take us to the boat, we admired the sea lions and marine iguana that had
the freedom of the port.
After a late lunch on board the
Coral I, we were taken ashore to ride a bus to the Cerro Colorado tortoise
reserve. This is a large, fenced, natural area where Galapagos tortoises – just
those from San Cristobal Island – may breed and lay eggs, which are then
collected by park rangers who incubate them in boxes to protect them from
non-native rats.
Once hatched, the young tortoises
are raised in a protected environment until they are about eight years old, by
which time their shells are tough enough to protect them from rats and they are released into the wild. We watched
a ranger gather up young tortoises and take them to where he had laid down some
food, mostly cabbage-like local vegetable matter. The baby tortoises would
swarm over themselves to get at the food.
As we continued our hike, we saw
some artificial ponds that had been created to give the tortoises water to
drink and a place to cool off. The larger the tortoise, the more likely it was
to be hiding in the brush where it would be difficult to see from the trail.
After the warm, humid hike, we rushed back to the air-conditioned bus for the
half-hour ride back to the waterfront.
We were given a half hour to shop in
town for last-minute necessities, but instead we went straight to La Casa
Blanca, an open-air bar where I ordered a chilled bottle of Sauvingnon Blanc.
The four of us – Mark had stayed on the boat to avoid the long bus ride through
hilly terrain - had no trouble finishing a bottle of wine in the allotted half
hour.
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