We started our day in the cloud forest in the highlands of Santa Cruz. We went to los gemelos, a pair of sinkholes.
It rained.
This is a bracken fern.
This is the trunk of the scalesia tree, which is covered in moss.
This is a millipede.
Overall, it was very green.
We visited a farm which has a lot of wild giant tortoises.
Some of them were afraid of us and hid inside of their shells.
It is a good way to hide.
They go into the pink pond to cool off.
Their faces seem kind of alien.
The shells are bone with an outer layer of keratin. The keratin layer forms in rings, but you can’t count how old the tortoise is by counting rings because they can generate multiple rings in a year.
Unfortunately in the really old tortoises the keratin layer tends to get polished or even worn right off, exposing the bone. So you can’t use the rings at all to tell how old a a really old tortoise is.
They had an old tortoise shell in the gift shop. The keratin had worn off, leaving only bone.
On the inside you could see the bump in the tummy that shows it was a male.
And the ridges on top where it connected to the spine.
Kerri barely fit inside.
North Seymour had tons of great frigatebirds.
Even though the mating season is still months away, many of them were courting.
The males inflate these big red pouches on their necks to attract females.
The process takes days, during which it’s hard to fly.
Or scratch.
Once they are inflated, when they see a female they spread their wings,
poof up their neck frills,
Spread their wings,
and shake while calling.
If the female likes him, she swoops in and lands.
Unfortunately this relationship didn’t work out. The male bit her beak
and she flew off.
If it does work out, they produce these super cute fluffball babies.
Which grow into bigger fluffball babies.
This little guy was desperately trying to mate even though he was still fluffy.
Then they grow into adolescents.
The frigatebirds can’t swim, because they don’t make oil for their feathers and don’t have webbed feet. This also makes them really light and they only weigh 1 lb at full size.
So they steal from others.
The baby blue footed boobies cry loudly for their Mom’s to come feed them.
But when she comes in with food, the frigatebirds try to intercept her.
They viciously keep trying to steal the food.
Ganging up and pecking at the poor baby booby.
This time the baby got his food though.
The young boobie’s feet aren’t very blue.
But the grownups feet are as blue as Kerri’s.
There were also land iguanas.
They were very scaly.
We also saw many sea lions.
Some of them were surfing in the very large waves.
It was hard work for the little guys.
Due to some technical difficulties and a very slow internet connection, we won’t be able to post our pictures until the next time we get internet. But here are some videos of our SCUBA trip that the divemaster took.
Sharks with us at the end:
Lots of sharks.
Spotted eagle rays over an eel garden. The things sticking up out of the ground that pull back into their burrows when the rays pass are the little eels.
Rays swimming through a cloud of fish.
Sharks and big fish over a pile of rocks.
More sharks. And us at the end. In the back. Matt is apparently bored by the sharks and examining rocks.
Did I mention we saw some sharks?
Today we went to the Giant Tortoise Breeding Center to see the baby tortoises.
They have really long necks.
There was one pen that had a clutch from this month! They were still really small.
This guy hasn’t even got eating down yet.
That’s it, use your foot!
Eating is hard work. Time to rest in the shade.
Cut it out, Yurtle!
Yurtle the tortoise doesn’t even rhyme!
We also saw some of the really big ones. There was no one else around when we were there so we could sit and hear all the munching of the babies and the adults.
They have long necks too. 
They also had big feet.
And big toenails.
This is an Espanola tortoise brought in from the San Diego Zoo. There were only 2 other males of his kind when they brought him in, so the breeding program was in trouble. But he is quite the lady’s man and is now the father of 80% of his subspecies.
There were also pens for the iguanas.
We saw lots of lava lizards while wandering around.
And lots of weird plants. This one looks like a fern, but it has flowers.
This is another cactus flower.
This is the inside of a dead cactus.
There was also a wasp that followed us around. Here is an old nest:
And here he is trying to camouflage on the backpack.
This is a spider.
The birds are still quite relaxed around people. This is a mockingbird that was squawking at Matt while he was taking Kerri’s picture.
Here is a cactus finch on the ground.
And here is a ground finch on a cactus.
He flew down off of his flower to investigate us.
It kept hopping closer and closer, with pollen still all over it’s nose. Then it pecked Kerri’s toe. Hard! It moved away after Kerri jumped back. Matt was not sure what she expected but assumed a bird hops over you are likely to get pecked.
