Love is in the air....

Let me tell you about giant tortoise sex:  It’s a lot less exciting than you think....  Actually, that’s not true- it’s just a lot slower than you think!  But it has drama, fights, jilted lovers!  Everything you need for a good love story – how appropriate for the day before Valentine's day.  

 But that all happened in the afternoon, let’s start in the morning.

We rejoined civilization today, and dropped anchor by the little town of Porto Ayoro, on the island of Santa Cruz.  I did not know that the Galapagos had actual towns, but about 30,000 people live on the islands, 18,000 of them in Porto Ayoro.  It is mostly a tourist town,  

but it is pretty, with many flowers (all of them introduced, the Galapagos only have white and yellow flowers).

It has a lovely little cemetery (I always enjoy visiting local cemeteries), full of whimsical flowers and tile decorations. 

By the harbor, fisherman sell their catch, under the hopeful eye of pelicans and herons. 

While other of the typical Galapagos natives just hang around....

 and play in the water.....

These babies are just a few months old.

The town also hosts the Darwin tortoise research center, where they breed and study tortoises with the goal of reintroducing them where they are extinct, or severely endangered.  It is estimated that their used to be over 500,000 tortoises in the Galapagos.  But, mostly during the whaling times, ships would stop by and load a lot of them in the cargo – because they can live a long time without food.  So they kept them as fresh food.  This makes me so sad I can barely talk about it, so that’s all I’ll say about it.  At their lowest point, there were only about 5000 tortoises left, but thanks to protection of both the tortoise and their habitat, and the reintroduction efforts, there are now about 35,000.  They enjoy playing in the pool together,and hanging out with their friends....

This is Diego - a Very Important Tortoise (VIT).  Diego was brought back from the San Diego zoo, because one of the species of tortoise was very endangered,  but when they tried to breed them, the males just could not figure out what to do:  In order for the male to have enough testosterone to produce sperm, they need to fight with each other.  The two males they had were just too peaceful. Then came Diego - as you can tell from the picture, Diego is tough (note the broken shell), and showed them how to be real dudes!  that worked, and Diego has been credited with 800 baby tortoises!  (you can tell by looking at him that Diego has enough testosterone).

We went for lunch to a beautiful local hotel that can only be reached by boat.  A heron kept us company as we enjoyed the restaurant pool.

 

 And then we went to a tortoise preserve in the highlands.  Tortoises are born at sea level, and stay there (we saw one a couple of days ago) until they are old enough to mate, which is about 25 years old.  Then they move to the highlands, which are much greener and where food is plentiful.  They only go back down to lay eggs (because the eggs need the higher temperature to hatch). 

 They share the land with banana plantations and cattle ranches, but only10% of the land can be used for farming, and tortoise can roam freely anywhere - the barb wires around the cow pastures have to be high enough for tortoise to walk under.  We saw several on the road, and mingling among the cows.

In their natural habitat, tortoises like to cool off by sitting in ponds,









 grazing lazily,

and just hanging around.....

 This time of the year, they also enjoy some hanky-panky.  In fact, just as we entered the preserve, this was happening (below).
it was happening V-E-R-Y  S-L-OOOOO-LY....

 Note that they just don't care at all that all the tourists are looking at them.....  we left them to their business and then stumbled onto true drama:  a big male was running after the much smaller female.....  running may be an overstatement.....  but going pretty fast for a 200 year old tortoise.... 

he got to her and was about to close the deal (honestly, she did not seem that interested....  but he did not seem to care),

when a much bigger male showed up...

 The smaller male gave up the chase right away - but doesn't that face break you heart?  You can tell he is thinking:  "What the hell just happened????"

 And then the older male did it.
This all happened V-E-R-Y S-L-OOOO-W-L-Y...
Tortoise sex may have drama, broken hearts, etc, but it is not fast paced........

and then, as if all this tortoise sex was not enough fun, this innocent little duck (white cheek red bill - native to the Galapagos), jumped on the female next to him and tried to do it - but then a third duck jumped into the fray, and it all ended in a very messy ducky three-some.....  I guess Valentine's day is tomorrow and love is in the air.......
Trust me - in this mess of splashy water, there are 3 ducks just getting it on.

 I'm finishing with a picture of this little Galapagos warbler, because he seemed upset that everyone was paying attention to the tortoises, and not to him: