Peurto Ayora
Today was a fantastic way to start off the islands. We went to the Darwin Research Centre in the morning which had some good general information about all the islands. We saw lots of land tortoises and some land iguanas. After wandering around a bit we went back to town for lunch before packing up to go to the beach.
In the afternoon we went to Tortuga Bay that is on Santa Cruz island but is only accessible by a 2.5km path. The hike itself was nice, but the beach was amazing! Beautiful white sand on about a 1km long beach and clear blue water. The swimming was so nice and there were marine iguanas hanging out on the beach.
After walking back to town we had dinner and walked around the harbour for a bit. We were surprised to see sea lions and small sharks right off the pier. One sea lion was lying right on the bench on the pier, not paying any attention to the tourists!