CHARLES DARWIN RESEARCH STATION

About a 20-minute walk by road northeast of

Puerto Ayora, the Charles Darwin Research Station

(www.galapagos.org; h7:30am-5pm) can also

be reached by dry landing from Academy

Bay. It contains a national-park information

center; an informative museum in the Van

Straelen Exhibition Center (where a video

in English or Spanish is presented several

times a day); a baby-tortoise house with incubators,

where you can see hatchlings and

young tortoises; and a walk-in adult tortoise

enclosure, where you can meet the Galápagos

giants face to face. The tiny tortoises in

the baby-tortoise house are repatriated to

their home islands when they weigh about

1.5kg (or are about four years old) – some

2000 have been repatriated so far.

Several of the 11 remaining subspecies of

tortoise can be seen here. Lonesome George ,

the only surviving member of the Isla Pinta

subspecies, is also here. George’s chances

to shack up with a comely female become

more remote as he crawls slowly into his

ninth decade.

Other attractions include paths through

arid-zone vegetation, such as salt bush,

mangroves and prickly pear and other cacti.

A variety of land birds, including Darwin’s

finches, can be seen.

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