when darwin said he saw giant turtles, he was NOT kidding ... giant, giant, giant ....

... just to review .... we left home saturday afternoon, flew to quito, slept in a hotel, flew to guayaquill, flew on to galapagos, took a bus, took a ferry, took jaime's mini van, visited craters, walked through the scalesia forest in the highlands of santa cruz island, went to lunch .... and then we went to the tortoise reserve ...

the tortoise reserves are to save valuable land for turtles that was being encroached on by cattle ... it seemed to me that everyone on santa cruz was a)a tourist b)working in the tourist industry or c)a farmer .... most everywhere we drove there were farms ... and lots of cows .... dora the explorer is not partial to cows or cow birds because they are not indigenous and are bad for the endemic species of animals and plants ....

so ... the tortoise reserves are large expanses of lands where the turtles would be going anyway ... and it's left safe for them ... cow free ... i don't think cows are bad for grown turtles, they just compete for the same greenery .... dogs and ants (non endemic species both) are also bad for turtle populations cause they eat the turtle eggs .... it's a hard go being a tortoise ... even if you are giant .... there are national park turtle reserves and private ones as well on the perimeters of the national park space .....

the turtle reserve we went to was kind of funny to me ... it was a large piece of land with random paths through it ... some paths were clearly the main ones, well trampled..... all were windy and circuitous .... some were hardly trod ... are you sure this is a path? .. in our case, we just followed dora the explorer ... she took us down paths that others were not taking so we'd see our own turtles .. not the ones that everyone else was gawking at ...

this is a well worn path, clearly defined:

dora, andy, drew, sophie and julia in the back ... i'm clearly lagging behind ... 

below? sophie on the road less travelled ... 

.....way less travelled .... imagine andy wondering aloud if there's poison ivy on turtle reserves in the galapagos ... is there endemic galapagan poison ivy? 

i know lots about the giant galapagos tortoise ... like .. they are only found in the galapagos .. there are 10 species left ... there were 15 when darwin visited ... 5 have become extinct ... i think we can mostly blame pirates for it! they used to stow the turtles in their pirate ships ... upside down so they wouldn't roam .. they'd stay alive for months and months ... and the pirates had fresh turtle meat whenever they decided to kill one from down in the hold ... darn pirates ... those plates on the turtle shell have age rings on them ... like in a tree ... average male giant galapagos turtle is four feet ... 450 (i think) pounds .... the only native predator to the turtles are hawks ... who eat the eggs .... (i'll have a hawk picture in a not too distant blog post)..... the turtles in these pics have dome shaped shells ... that's what turtles have when they live in wet and lush lands cause they mostly reach down ... dry area turtles have saddle shells ... with a notch out ... so their necks can do more stretching to reach food that is not so easily obtainable .... 

and it was extraordinary ... there were giant turtles everywhere ... everywhere ... in the mud, in the grass, in the bushes, under the tree, on the path ...

and they were walking and snorting and sleeping and eating and happy and annoyed and scared ... we only saw one that seemed truly scared of us and got all pulled into his shell .... but i can vouch, that big head, long neck, and thick legs and feet do indeed all pull back into that shell ....

my little scientific brain (the scientific part of me is wee) wonders why we don't just call these things dinosaurs ... to me they seem so clearly related .... i know we don't know what colors dinos were ... but i imagine they are that turtle color .... i know we don't know what they sounded like, but surely some of them made that same snuffling growling snorting sound .... (just wait til about 20 blog posts from now when i tell you about the turtles we saw mating ... now, that's a dinosaur noise ... how's that for a teaser to get you coming back?) .... ...and weren't some of the dinos armour plated? hello? just like these massive turtles, right? .... giant turtles are cold blooded ... and when i first learned about dinosaurs they were cold blooded too ... or so the science books said ... now, scientists debate whether they are cold or warm blooded ..... anyway ... i think turtles are related to dinosaurs even if no one else does, ok?

julia here is five foot six, 100 pounds ... i'd say there's room for about four more of her inside that shell ..

..... at 6 feet, drew is way to long for the shell , but it's still super roomy on the inside ...

and sophie ... she's just little .... she didn't even complain about having to squirm inside .... like the big kids did ...

tomorrow? lava tunnels ....