Santa Cruz Interior

CARANGO AMEL 54 #035
PETER and VICKY FORBES
Mon 22 Feb 2016 01:10

Galapagos is home to the World’s only species of sea swimming Iguana - no movement of limbs only swinging to tail.



Here is the home team with huge crater in background - the interior of Santa Cruz, Galapagos proved to be verdant almost the the extent of tropical rain forest. Many types of tree, some unique to these islands [Scalesis trees] and huge numbers of shrubs and cacti. We were surprised by the extent of the vegetation after expecting to find many barren volcanic areas but flora and fauna abound. Many species of birds mainly finches and huge butterflies orange and yellow are abundant. Humans have imported domestics cows. The Darwin research centre was tragic and almost totally redundant and to say the least unimpressive and very disappointing.
We saw very large numbers of giant tortoises - all appeared happy in as near natural conditions as possible - these vast creatures breed in this environment but only due to human interference by importing huge mounts of sand for the females to lay their eggs in.