Lying around the azure inlets of Academy Bay's rocky shore, PUERTO AYORA , on the southern coast of Santa Cruz, was home to fewer than a couple of hundred people until the early 1970s. Now, laden with souvenir shops, travel agents, restaurants and hotels, the town supports a population of around 11,000 people who enjoy a standard of living that's higher than any other province in the republic, giving the port a distinct aura of well-appreciated privilege. There's a relaxed atmosphere to the place, with tourists meandering down the waterfront in the daytime, browsing through the shops stuffed with blue-footed booby T-shirts and carvings of giant tortoises, while fishermen work across the street in little Pelican Bay , building boats and sorting through their catches, watched by hungry pelicans. In the evenings locals play five-a-side soccer and volleyball outside the Capitanía and as it gets darker, the restaurant lights cast a modest glow over the bay and the bars fill with locals, tourists and research scientists, a genial mix that ensures Puerto Ayora has the best nightlife of all Galápagos towns.

 

It's easy to find your way around the port. The main thoroughfare is named, predictably, Avenida Charles Darwin . Running along the waterfront , from the municipal dock at its southern end to the Charles Darwin Research Station at its northern. Just about everything you'll need is on Darwin: hotels, restaurants, the bank, travel agents, bars, discos, information, plus a number of less indispensable souvenir shops. The town's other important road is Avenida Padre Julio Herrera , running inland from Darwin and the dock to become the main road to the highlands and the link to the airport on Baltra. For a spot of peace and quiet, head for the Bahía Tortuga , a short walk southwest of town.

The first record of human habitation in what is now Puerto Ayora, was a group of shipwrecked sailors who had struggled here through cactus forests from the other side of the island, within just a few months of the Academy (sailing under the auspices of the California Academy of Sciences), mooring in the bay here in 1905 and lending its name to it. The castaways had kept themselves alive for six months drinking sea lion blood, chewing unpalatable cactus pads and supping on the brackish water that collected in rock pools by the shore before being rescued. Puerto Ayora itself wasn't founded until the 1920s by a small group of Norwegians, lured to the Galápagos by ruthless promoters trading on the popularity of William Beebe's 1924 book, Galápagos, World's End , an account of his trip there with the New York Zoological Society. They promised the Norwegians - who gave away all their savings to go - a secret Eden where the "soil is so rich that 100,000 people could easily find homes", noting that gold and diamonds were probably around too. Under an agreement with the Ecuadorian government, they landed on Floreana, but within a few months of back-breaking work, some had died and many more given up. In 1926, others went to Academy Bay and built frame houses, a fish cannery and a wharf, so founding the port, and for a time, things went uncharacteristically well until the cannery blew up, killing two and injuring several others. To rub salt into the wound, the government seized their boat and all their remaining equipment, claiming that they had not built the harbours, roads and schools laid out in their previous agreement. By 1929, only three Norwegians were left on Santa Cruz, but through sheer guts and hard work, they built the foundations for the largest and richest city in the Galápagos.