In the morning we motored the short distance around to the channel between Baltra and Santa Cruz. A ferry crosses this channel giving people access to Baltra airport. We landed at the ferry slip then took a bus for the rest of the day on Santa Cruz.
Santa Cruz is a hilly island with volcanic peaks rising to over 800 metres. The hills catch the prevailing wind and are often shrouded in cloud which precipitates out as drizzly mist meaning that the upland areas are well watered. The upland Scalesia woods are smothered in hairy lichens which catch all the moisture from the mist whilst higher up the slopes are covered in Miconia scrub.
We saw more bird species on Santa Cruz than on any other island including 8 species of Darwin's Finch and a couple of difficult to locate species - the Galapagos Rail and the Paint-billed Crake. In the late afternoon we visited the Charles Darwin Research Centre in Puerto Ayora. The research centre holds breeding populations of some of the endangered sub-species of Galapagos Tortoises. We re-joined out boat off Puerto Ayora.