Today, we arrived in the Galapagos and we’re all a bit in awe of the arrival today – we arrived around 1pm today to the airport on Baltra Island – where we found our guide for the afternoon (Isabel). We took a couple minute shuttle to a Ferry to cross to Santa Cruz island.  On the brief departure from the airport, we saw a land iguana walking into the airport, a seal jumped up right next to Rawlings on the ferry and we’d been there for minutes.

From the ferry, we drove to the Highlands of Santa Cruz to a tortoise reserve – we sampled a few empanadas as we hadn’t eaten since an early breakfast and walked around a maze of walking paths with tortoises all over the place. We respected the 10ft distance requested unless the tortoises were right next to the path, but we did see a girl leaning over the back of one of the larger tortoises and he didn’t seem to mind (most of the tortoises were male as the females were at lower elevations nesting).

We visited a lava tunnel as part of the reserve – apparently from two separate eruptions on the island. Rawlings had been looking most forward to this!

We saw so many other interesting plants and animals, Darwin finches, mockingbirds.

Afterwards we headed into the Port city and visited the Charles Darwin research center where turtle eggs are nurtured and baby turtles protected until they can be reintroduced into their native habitats.

It had been a long day and just as the boys were starting to drag, we made our way to the beautiful hotel where we’ll be for the next three nights!