Santa Cruz Island cruises

About the island

Santa Cruz Island

Santa Cruz, once named Indefatigable after a British warship, sits at the center of the Galápagos and is the island almost every cruise visits. It combines the largest town in the archipelago, Puerto Ayora, with green highlands where giant tortoises roam free, and with beaches and coves where flamingos, sea turtles and sharks feed.

Santa Cruz covers 986 square kilometers (381 square miles) and rises to 864 meters (2,835 feet). It is the most populated island of the Galápagos, and most of its residents live in Puerto Ayora on Academy Bay and in the highland villages of Bellavista and Santa Rosa. Its moist highlands are covered with Scalesia forest, a tree-sized relative of the daisy, and crossed by lava tunnels that visitors can walk through.

On our cruises Santa Cruz appears in nearly every route, combined with every region of the archipelago. Most visits include the Charles Darwin Research Station in Puerto Ayora and its Fausto Llerena tortoise center, part of a breeding program that has returned more than 9,000 tortoises to the wild since 1965, and a visit to the highlands, at El Chato or another reserve, to see adult giant tortoises in the wild. On the coast, cruises land at Bachas Beach, a nesting beach for green sea turtles with flamingo lagoons behind the dunes; at Dragon Hill, with land iguanas and a flamingo lagoon; and at Black Turtle Cove, a mangrove inlet explored by panga, where sea turtles, white-tipped reef sharks and golden rays glide below the boat.

Santa Cruz is also the best place to understand the conservation story of the islands: Lonesome George, the last tortoise of Pinta Island, is preserved and displayed at the research station. In the highlands, vermilion flycatchers and Darwin's finches live in the moist forest, and the twin craters of Los Gemelos are a short stop on the road from Baltra.

Santa Cruz suits every traveler: the visits are easy, the town has restaurants and shops, and the highlands are cooler and often misty, so a light jacket and a raincoat are useful from June to November. Good walking shoes help in the lava tunnels.

Fast facts

• Santa Cruz is the most populated island of the Galápagos, and Puerto Ayora is its largest town.
• Since 1965 the national park's breeding program has returned more than 9,000 giant tortoises to the wild.
• Lonesome George, the last tortoise from Pinta Island, is preserved at the Charles Darwin Research Station.