We arrived in Peuto Ayora late last night after a lengthy navigation. Some of the group were leaving today so they were up and away early for a quick visit to Darwin Station before catching their plane out.

The rest of us had a more leisurely start to the day. We also visited Darwin Station, run jointly by the Ecuador National Park and the Darwin Foundation it is a place that both shows large land tortoises to tourists and conducts breeding programs for land tortoises. The national park rangers collect all the eggs they can find and bring them to the station where they are incubated until hatching. Then the young tortoises are kept at the station until they are 4 years old, and then released back into the Island from which the eggs originally came. From what we were told this program pretty much saved 10 of the existing 11 species of land tortoises from extinction. The 11th species only has one mature individual surviving, his name is Lonesome George. The land tortoises are amazing, big - up to 220 kg - and live to 150-200 years.

After lunch we drove up into the highlands of the island to see land tortoises in their natural environment. It was quite surprising to see these huge animals in a cool, misty, forest and grass land setting. Over the course of the afternoon wandering around this private farm we came across 25 or so individual tortoises.