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Today I woke up bright and early to start exploring Santa Cruz. Breakfast was included in the stay and I randomly bumped into people that I met at the Hacienda I was working at in San Cristobal so had breakfast with them. In the morning, I went to Rancho Primicias and hired a taxi for the morning in the highlands where there were hundred year old large tortoises. My driver showed me around the ranch and then went to Chato Tortoise Reserve right next to the Ranch. We went on a wild goose chase and couldn't find the other tortoises there. It was a fairly muddy trail so I was thankful that they had boots for me to put on. On the same ranch, I went to the Lava Tunnels which are underground tunnels more than a kilometer in length and was formed when the outside skin of molten-lava flow solidified. When the flow stopped,the molten lava inside the file kept going out of the solidified skin and then left tunnels. My driver said he would meet me at the end of the tunnels but when I reached the end, all you could do was crawl beneath and the space looked too hard to climb through. The tunnels were kind of creepy especially since I was solo. I had to walk down this longggggg road to get to my driver since I didn't go out the back. He told me to be back in 15 minutes so when he saw me he threw up his hands and backed the truck up all the way to me. The highlands are humid and then on top of it, a lot of waking. I was exhausted already.
I went back into town and had this delicious Ceviche with shrimp for lunch and then headed to Tortuga Bay which was amazing. It took about 30 minutes to walk the path but was absolutely well worth it. The sand was white and powdery. There were many rocks closer to where the waves break and also had crabs/ various other birds. I saw a tiny lava iguana as well. I laid there for awhile to relax since I haven't been able to do that much durning this trip. I walked all the way down to the end of the beach and into town since there went many taxis outside! Not too bad but my feet were tired of walking,
After this, I took the water taxi to Angermeyer Point, in order to get to Las Grietas. Again, this was another 30 minute walk, passing by a beach and lagoons. It was so pretty! People jumped off of a 60 foot cliff but I didn't try it. The area was filled with lava rocks and was a challenge to get to but very cool to see and experience. I finished up the evening going to dinner and eating fish with shrimp and coconut sauce. My boat leaves at 7:00 am to San Cristobal. I was able to see everything except for the Darwin Station. That's okay! A few people told me it wasn't all that great.
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