Ethan and Michelle's Around the World Travel Blog: Galapagos Tortoises...My 1st Grade Dream

Ever since I wrote a report and made a diarama out of a shoebox in 1st grade about the amazing Galapagos Tortoise, I have wanted to meet one. When I finally had the chance, I relished every moment. First, Galapagos tortoises are rare. In fact, the giant tortoise of the Galapagos ilk can only be found in one other island across the world, although fossils show that giant tortoises were all over the world millennia ago. In fact, there were originally 300,000 tortoises on the Galapagos until pirates, whalers, and others stored them alive on their ships for food for months at a time, exploiting the amazing ability of tortoises to go without water and food for a long while. The tortoise can be over 500 lbs and lives inside a shell that it creates and grows over time (there are even rings on the shell that one can count up until age 40 to determine one´s age). Scratching a tortoise on its shell is even enjoyed by those tortoises who are acclimated to humans. Here is the kicker. How old are the big turtles? No one knows! All that we know is that we have seen tortoises live in unnatural conditions for over 175 years! But today these poor endangered animals who might have met Darwin on his visit do not even have a safe enough environment to lay their eggs in. Introduced rats eat their eggs while goats out compete them for food and generally taunt them (pictures actually show goats standing on tortoises to reach higher food sources). Here is where people actually help. A research station goes out and finds eggs of giant tortoises and brings them to an incubator, hatches them, and raises them until them are ¨rat proof¨ in size around age 3. This process is remarkably successful and is progressing the Galapagos to have new populations of these gorgeous creatures. And, the great by product of this effort is the ability for tourists to see baby tortoises, all 3 inches of them! These tiny little guys are very strange in that they look like clones of their burly old parents right after birth. Benjamin Button would be at home. Our experience with the tortoises brought us up close, and as long as we made no sudden movements the tortoises would neither hiss nor retract into their shells. Let's hope that efforts continue to bring back this endangered species!