Galapagos Day 5: Santa Cruz Island – Highlands and Charles Darwin Research Station!

Our schedule for the day!


Exploring a lava tube in the highlands of Santa Cruz (Formed by the solidifying of the outside skin of a molten lava flow. When the lava flow stopped, the molten lava inside the flow kept going, emptying out of the solidified skin and creating a tunnel. Craziness!!!)


Giant Land Tortoise in the wild


Land Tortoise in the wild (you can hear our guide saying how they can live for 200 years)


Me at the entrance to the Charles Darwin Research Station


Baby Land Tortoises, being raised in captivity


Baby Land Tortoises can be pretty cute, too.


Lonesome George is famous. He is the only surviving member of the Isla Pinta subspecies of the giant Galapagos Land Tortoise. They have been trying for years to get him to mate with a female from another closely-related subspecies, but supposedly he has shown absolutely no interest in doing so. All reports are that he just ignores or chases away any females placed in his area. They've even been showing him tortoise porn with no luck. Imagine our shock when we came upon the following:

That’s Lonesome George on top, looking quite virile really… Maybe there's hope yet...