Day 5 in Galápagos. Giant tortoises

Man they are big!
The final day of the trip and we had still not seen the most iconic animal in the Galápagos, the giant tortoise. It was a very early start and we needed to have our luggage outside the door of our cabin by six am. During the night the boat had moved to Santa Cruz Island and was anchored in a beautify bay with many other boats.  While waiting to get onto the dingy, a massive Galápagos shark cruised past the boat. Apparently these are quite aggressive sharks so not a good time to fall into the water!
After arriving at the jetty, we boarded a bus and headed up into the hills, which were all extinct volcanoes. There was a mist around and we were told that this was a pretty regular fixture on the island. This meant that there was fresh water on the island. This looked much more like an island on the equator! Green and beautiful. There was still plenty of evidence of the volcanic history of the island with large volcanic rocks everywhere. There were green fields with cows and other evidence of human settlement on the island. Every now and then there was what looked like large black rocks among the cows. When looking closer, these were the tortoises! They are massive. The fences in the area all do not have the bottom rung. This is to allow the tortoises to move around the island at will.
Just love the mud
So pretty
We stopped at a farm, and there we found the mother load of giant tortoises. In a mud hole, just lying around waiting for breeding season to start. Oh well, when you have been alive for 100 to 150 years and you can still breed, I guess a bit of lying around in the mud is acceptable. We spent some looking at these amazing animals. They were very nearly hunted to extinction by early pirates and whalers, but, fortunately enough survived and they are now plentiful.
Now you get a good idea of the size
Lava tunnel
There were also a few lava tunnels in the area and we had a bit of time to go through one.
All to soon it was time to head back to the jetty and get the ferry for the very short crossing to Baltra Island where the airport is. This was a US Air Force base in the Second World War with the main task of protecting the Panama channel. Our luggage had, in the mean time made it to the airport and was neatly lined up waiting for us. Just another example if the excellent service offered by the staff of the cruse. The cruse company had arranged preferential check in for us and we headed through to the boarding gate for the flight back to the main land. The end of a really great trip!
Taking off from Baltra Island airport



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