Last Day On The Galapagos Islands

Today is the last day on the Galàpagos Islands. Today we go to San Cristobal and see the Giant tortoises. After we packed up all of our stuff in our cabin, we disembarked to San Cristobal. San Cristobal is one of four inhabited islands. It is such a small population though, that the people there rely mostly on tourism for money. When we got to the island, we saw a group of sea lions laying on every step leading up to the dock.

The tortoises that we went to go see were in a fenced off area so that they could grow up undisturbed by the people that live on the island. As soon as the baby turtles are old enough, they release them into the wild. Most of the adult tortoises here were recovered from people who had taken them as pets. Now there is a law that you can not keep them as pets. We came on feeding day so there were lots of groups of them around the food areas.

Some things that I loved learning about were the shells of the tortoises. They are connected to the skeleton on the inside of the tortise, this is called an exoskeleton. You can tell which island each tortoise is from just by looking at the shell. For example there is tortoise that lives on an island that has a shell that looks like a saddle. This is so that they can reach the leaves in the trees because there are not so many things to eat on the ground. I also learned about Lonesome George. He was the last tortoise of his kind on the island. The others were all taken by the University of San Diego in the 1920s. Unfortunately, he is now dead, so this species is now extinct.

Once we were done watching the tortoises, we went back into the town and had some pizza. Then we went and looked at the shops. After we were done with that, we went to the airport to leave the Galapagos Islands. We landed in Guayaquil 45 minutes later. In Guayaquil, we settled in and looked around at an old town by our hotel. Guayaquil is the economic center of Ecuador. The town is on the side of a hill. The cobblestone streets were my favorite part.

After we got back to the hotel, we got dressed up and went down to the farewell dinner.