HPA - EPI Galapagos Islands Ecology Spring Break 2026

 This morning on Santa Cruz was honestly one of those moments you don’t really forget. We spent the time out in the field with giant tortoises, walking through their habitat and getting close to them. Some of them were absolutely massive — easily over 150 kg. Just standing next to them felt surreal. For the biggest ones, we didn’t even try to weigh them because it was obvious they were way too heavy, so we just took carapace and plastron measurements and moved on. But the real highlight were two tiny baby tortoises we found. One weighed about 3 kg and the other only 1 kg. They were unbelievably small, especially compared to the adults, and we were even allowed to carefully hold them. Our instructors said these were the smallest tortoises they had ever seen in the wild — and they’ve been doing this for years — which made it feel even more special. It’s crazy to think that these little ones will one day grow into those huge giants we saw earlier. Experiences like this really make you...

 After a very relaxing morning (breakfast, walk, packing) we departed our hostel for a tour with Andres! We had a lovey meal of pizza before visiting a museum at the equator. Arriving the day before the spring equinox was perfect timing. In addition, one of our challenges involved balancing an egg right on the line and our group was particularly successful - unbeknownst to us it was Ecuador’s National Egg Day!  Soon we will be at the airport to begin our journey home!

 Our morning was filled with various forms of transportation- a bus to the tip of Santa Cruz, a boat to Balta, a bus to the airport, a plane to Quito and a bus to our lovely hotel!  After arrival we went to a grocery store to pick up some sandwich fixings, dreamy dragon fruit and various other yummies!  In advance of receiving their phones we each selected two words to represent being “cell free.” The words were the following! break, people, refreshing, grounding, connected, free, social, good, unusual, break, relaxing, present, normal, activities, disconnected, normal, unsettling, without worries, laughter, free, archaic, open eyes, freeing, nice, socializing, fun, society, freedom Once phones were returned some connected to families and friends while others chose to wait until evening time! A wonderful reminders on the connectivity and distancing that phones provide. Tomorrow we will be visiting a few places in Quito before beginning our three plane trip home!

In the early morning we all woke up to catch a ferry to go back to Santa Cruz. We were all sleepy and a little tired. After arriving, we went to have breakfast at the hotel “La Peregrina”, then got ready for our hike to Tortuga Bay. The trail went through the national park and we saw a lot of cactus and other plants and how they had adapted to the island. When we arrived at the beach we walked to “Playa mansa” where we tried to snorkel, unfortunately the water wasn’t that clear to see anything, so we went to a little natural pool called “El pocito” where we saw baby fish and a shark.  On the way back to our stuff we saw a baby hammerhead swimming in the shallows and stopped to watch it. After swimming for a while we went to sit in a shade and had lunch from the bento box. We stayed for another hour and then started the hike back, and on the way we saw a huge pile of iguanas cooling down in the shade. We also saw lots of lava lizards and shore birds on the hike back.  After we ...