The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

This is a lava tunnel we went into in Santa Cruz. This one was quite short, while others on the island have been found to go for kilometres. On the way here there were some male tortoises fighting in the road, however as we approached the fight broke off and both hid until we were past.

There was not much headroom.

Some roots from trees above had made it down into the tunnel.

There were artificial lights inside, which were causing ferns to grow.

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.