We spent the night sailing to Santa Cruz island. Santa Cruz supports one of the largest human populations of the five inhabited islands. Some 8,000 residents are distributed between the cattle-farming communities in the lush highlands and the coastal town of Puerto Ayora, where we started our tour. Puerto Ayora is the economic center of the Galapagos Islands. All the tour boats visit Puerto Ayora, anchoring in Academy Bay so there are many hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops, discotheques, bars, internet coffee shops, dive shops, tour operators and other stores. The bay is full of sailboats, sea birds fill the air and marine iguanas line the shore.

In the morning some of us hiked to Las Grietas, a brackish water lagoon. Brackish water here does not mean yucky, stinky, still, swampy, cloudy water but means where fresh and salt water mix together. The water was clear and we could hardly wait to dive in. The temperature must be at least 40 degrees and I was sweating just standing in the shade. After swimming for an hour or so, we went back to explore Puerto Ayora, the largest town in the Galápagos. We did a little shopping and then we had a pit stop for cocktails at a local bar. After lunch on the boat, a few of us decided to go back into town and have some more bevvies instead of staying on the boat until our afternoon activity. We met the rest of the group in town, a little later, and made our way through town to visit the Charles Darwin Research Station, do some more shopping, and see how locals live in the islands. One lady tiled the outside walls of her house. We mossed into her yard (apparently it's allowed) and spent some time looking at her beautiful handiwork.

At the Charles Darwin Research Station we saw the huge land tortoises, or los galapagos, which once flourished in the islands. The populations were decimated in the early 1800s by the whaling ships that stopped in the islands to fill their holds with fresh meat. It was a bit of a repeat of the Tortoise Breeding Centre in Puerto Villamil. The Galapagos National Park offices are also based here. Scientists, park rangers, and park managers make huge efforts to preserve and protect the Galápagos Islands. The Station is also a tortoise breeding and rearing center, where tortoises of different subspecies are prepared for reintroduction to their natural habitats.

Established in 1961, the CDRS ensures the survival of the flora and fauna unique to Galapagos through its research and education. We saw a stuffed Lonesome George, the last surviving tortoise of the subspecies from Pinta Island.

After touring the Charles Darwin Center, we lazily made our way back to town, shopping along the way and eventually stopped for (you guessed it) some cocktails. You really have to stop frequently to replenish the bodily fluids lost in the blistering heat here. (But seriously, we drank more today than any other day on the trip. We were so exhausted after our activities in the heat that our beds were calling.) After a few laughs we went back to the boat and had a farewell drink with the crew and then our last dinner. We had to pack our damp clothes and then a few of us came on deck and watched hundreds of reef sharks swimming around the boat.

It was a good way to wind down after our Galapagos cruise. Tomorrow, our tour is over and we return to Quito.