“No Pressure” day

With a cruise booked and confirmed, there was no pressure to do anything today.  Which was just as well, because the sky was grey and clouded over with drizzle.

After a lazy start, we headed out to the Charles Darwin Centre.  In terms of living wildlife there, we saw the giant tortoises in adult and juvenile forms plus some land iguanas.  But the centre was interesting with various information:

• Giant tortoises once roamed all continents of the world except Antarctica but are found only in Galapagos and Seychelles now.
• Tortoise movements and that of many other wildlife around the world may be tracked on www.movebank.org

Walking back to the town centre, we found a slightly more upmarket part of town which appeared to be the centre for the better-heeled travellers.  Back in our neck of the woods, we had a set lunch (called Almuerzo rather than menu-del-dia) here for USD5pp including a limonada.  Great food at amazing value.

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To make the most of the day, we took a water taxi to Punta Estrada where there was a small beach.  The posh Finch Bay Resort was there and we dropped in for a coffee/tea which ended up the same price as our lunch.  It was nice but I couldn’t justify the ~USD350 rate especially when the pool was too cold to swim in at this time of year.

We walked to the Las Grietas swimming hole.  It looked really inviting and we regretted not having come prepared for a cool (or cold) dip.

We rounded off our stay at Puerto Ayora with dinner on Charles Binford again.   I felt that we could have done with the extra day here tomorrow, but we have to forego our paid-up accommodation (USD20pp) for the highly discounted last minute cruise (discounted by USD1400pp).