charles darwin research center ....

so, the best thing, to me, about the charles darwin research center on santa cruz island in the galapagos is that they are breeding turtles and then repopulating the islands that have had outside influences hurting the indigenous species ....

we saw eggs in incubators and then newborn turtles .... and turtles a bit more grown up and about ready to be let out in the wild ....

it was our last day touring the galapagos islands, and i bought the first souvenir of the week: a charles darwin research station tshirt ..... now, as i blog from my travel journal, my vacation is long over, but i've worn the tee tons of times ....

from the research station, dora pointed us towards the restaurant where we were to have lunch... and she left us to wander down the main street of the town ... the main tourist street anyway .... and we went in some shops .....

 in most of the stores we went in, we didn't buy much, but had fun looking ....

the road we walked on was right along the ocean .... there was a port for small cruise ships to drop their tourists off at the charles darwin station .... and then more of a local port ....

 there were signs all over the place that said don't fee the wildlife .... but the sealions and pelicans can't read ...... they were going for fish scraps as the fishermen cleaned their day's catch .....

i guess it could have been any fishing port in the world ....