Charles Darwin Research Station

Worth a visit if you are already in Puerto Ayora, but I wouldn’t make a special visit for this center. If you do come here, getting a guide is worthwhile, IMO. You will get more out of the visit. Plan to spend 1-2 hours here, no more. I’m a bit surprised by the whining in other reviews about the $10 admission fee and the cost of a guide, considering the money supports the giant tortoise breeding and conservation program. Really folks?

Only one building is open to visitors, while the rest are research facilities that are off-limits to the public. Visitors can explore exhibits about the evolution of animals in the Galápagos Islands and Charles Darwin’s visit. For an additional $10 at the park entrance, you can hire a guide to visit the area with tortoises, but I opted not to pay this fee since I toured the facility independently. Outside the facility, there is a resting area and a café where you can buy simple drinks. Inside, you’ll find videos about the Galápagos Islands and model tortoise shells, which you can take pictures with. The facility is about a 15-minute walk from downtown, and since the path is flat, it’s easy to reach on foot. The park also includes two beaches that are free to access, making it a pleasant addition to your visit.

Absolutely wonderful afternoon spent here touring the research station and enjoying a guided tour of the tortisess and learning about the local conservation efforts. I can't imagine coming to Santa Cruz and not saving a few hours to come here. Our guide Bayron was very patient and knowledgeable, allowing us to stop for photos along the tour of anything that caught our eye. While walking to the research station, you pass two areas where you may be approached by the businesses offering guides. The station is 100% free, but the tortise tour is $10 per person for the mandatory guide. The tortises and their stories are beautiful to learn about, and the conservation efforts here are remarkable. I'm grateful we decided to do the guided tour in addition to walking the area on our own.

Exceptional experience! Gandhi gave us the tour and was passiomate , informative and funny. I learned more than I expected and loved every bit. Got to see turtles from kindergarten through a hundreads of years old. $10 pp for tour and research center free. 100% worth it!

It says here it's closing at 18:00. It's my last day here in Santa Cruz and I showed up at 17:30 thinking I'll do a quick look around. The guard at the gate says they are not letting people in and he refused to let me in (and other people too). I tried to explain I need only those 30 minutes but he didn't listen to me. He spoke to his superior on the phone but the latter was unmoved too. I paid $200 to get here to the islands and I can't even visit this place. It's absurd. What a poor approach to the customer.

It's worth a stop if you are already local, but I wouldn't go out of your way to see it! It was nice walking the trails and learning about the history with our tour guide. We walked around the museum a bit and then went back into town!

We expected way more from this! A lot of buildings were closed and empty. The one building with information had board with everything on it, but it didn't really get our attention. The short movie was nice. At the start we were told we needed a tour for the turtle breeding ground. We decided to first do the other thing. When walking around we came to the enclosures with turtles. We walked the pathway in between them and found some more information. This time nicely designed and informative. At the end of the path it seemed we had been walking the path which required a guide backwards. We didn't get why you should need a guide. The breeding ground is not out in the open, it's enclosures.

Was worth a visit whilst on the island but I saw many more tortoises on San cristobal at las galageuros! You need a guide to take you round which i feel is a little unnecessary would have preferred self paced!