December 5th, turtles and more

We booked a taxi to bring us to another part of the island, 25 Km from the B&B and as far as we could get on land. The first stop was Galapaguera, a private domain where tortoises are bred. Close to the entrance we saw the first giant tortoise so we had an idea of what to expect. Along the well laid out path we kept our eyes open trying to spot more animals between the trees and bushes. About halfway was the nursery with small, 20cm tortoises in a few enclosures, next to the nursery we saw older ones up to about 40cm. The second half of the tour we came across the largest specimen said to be 90 to 100 years old. They were very big and they didn’t only stay between the bushes they also walked on “our” walkway. We had to wait few times until they decided to leave the path and other times we walked up to them until they retracted inside their shell so we could walk by safely.

A few kilometers futher the road ends at Puerto Chino, a small secluded beach with, again, lots of sealions. It’s also a good place to spot the blue footed boobie. We had to climb the rocks to a high up viewing spot to find just one blue footed boobie and a pelican. To leave the beach we had just 50cm of space between large sealions to get back to the car.

On the way up we noticed that El Junco, a crater lake with fresh water was still cloud covered so we hoped it would clear later, unfortunately that was not the case but we climbed the hill anyway. We could just see the edge of the lake fron the viewpoint.

We continued our way back to town and stopped in El Progresso to see the Casa del Ceibo, the treehouse. During the day it can be visited and it can also be rented for lodging. The whole place is made from recycled materials, like beercases and bottles.

After a moment of relaxing in our room we went into town again for drink at the waterfront. On the way back we waked as close as possible to the water looking out for wildlife. We were lucky today as we was crabs, sealions, three giant seaturtles, a few big iguanas, a pelican, a blue footed boobie and some frigate birds.