Tortoises
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Today we were up for a 6:30 breakfast on board, and we were greeted by a loud, officious bull sea lion herding his harem at the side of our boat. It was pretty funny to watch how important he clearly felt he was.
After breakfast we headed to the Charles Darwin Research Center, and Tortoise Conservation Area where we saw baby tortoises clambering over each other to get at the banana leaves they were being fed. They´re kept in pens that are differentiated by which island they came from, so that when they are large enough to fend for themselves, they can be re-introduced to the island they came from. The hatching program has been successful enough to introduce 1000 turtles back to the wild last year.
From the baby tortoise pens, we moved on to the female´s pens where the girls were competing to be queen of the feeding pad by stretching their necks out in a competition to see who had the greater height, and, as a consequence, dominance. They were pretty entertaining, and obligingly “posed” for some great pictures for us.
The pen of male tortoises was impressive. These enormous, ancient beasts move as if they are carrying the weight of the world on their backs (I suppose if we all had to carry our houses on our backs, we would too…) They lumbered along at a tragically slow pace, scraping the bottoms of their shells on the ground in a way that produced a sound that made you feel how laborious an effort it is for them to move at all. One of them emerged from the underbrush and moved straight towards George, at the speed water freezes, allowing George to get some fantastic pictures before he was forced to move out of the way. I´m sure that if one of these beasts stepped on you it could do some damage you wouldn´t soon recover from.
Of course we saw “Lonesome George”, the last Pinta Island tortoise known to exist. We were given an exhausting explanation of the research and effort being put into trying to find a match for Lonesome, but he seems uninterested in perpetuating his line. It seems like when he dies, another species will be extinct – it was very odd to get a chance to see what is probably the last of a species.
The Darwin Center also has a breeding program for land iguanas, and it was great to get to see them up close, after they were so elusive yesterday in the wild. Incidentally, they were also fat, well fed and slow moving. They´re bright yellow – a stark contrast from the sea iguanas, so in some ways it´s easy to see how this species became endangered. It´s like they´re advertising to be a target for their enemies.
In the afternoon we visited tortoises in the wild – actually it´s a “tortoise ranch”, where tortoises roam free in an enclosed section of tall grass and trees. It´s pretty easy to find them, as they essentially mow a path through the tall grass, flattening everything in their wake. They would be terrible at hide-and-seek. Incidentally, these tortoises are absolutely enormous. George has a picture of me standing beside one whose shell comes up to my waist. We´ve got lots of pictures to post when we get home.
Tomorrow we´re off snorkeling again at Devil´s crown, a sunken atoll. Apparently there´s a chance of seeing sharks there, so I´m pretty excited. You won´t know if we come out of this one okay until we get back to Quito – that´s the next time we´ll be near the Internet. Wish us luck!
Noel & George
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