The 13 major islands, 6 small islands and scores of islets are spread over 400km of ocean with a land mass covering approx 7,882km2. The highest point is Volcan Wolf on the Equator line on Isabela, the largest island in the archipeligo and the 12th largest in the South Pacific Ocean.
Known as the Las Enchantadas (Enchanted Isles) by early explorers, the earliest of the islands was formed 4-5 million years ago by underwater volcanos erupting and rising to the ocean surface on an endless geological conveyor belt that will ultimately see them die beneath the waves.
The Galapagos was the catalyst that led to the 1859 publication of On The Origin Of Species By The Means Of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin (Shropshire lad), with the mockingbirds and tortoises not the finches elicting the revelation that was to start the ball rolling. The phrase Darwin's Finches was coined by a David Lack some years later for his book and the name stuck.
The first national park was formed in 1959 and then the Charles Darwin Research Station, based in Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz, was inaugurated in 1964. There is a captive breeding programme for tortoises, after which the islands were named. 97% of the Galapagos is now a National Park, though only about 3% of that can be visited by tourists. The fauna is famous for being relatively fearless of humans and at times it was difficult not to trip over them. They would have no qualms about crossing the trail in front of you and making you wait for them. Tortoises, blue-footed boobies and lava lizards have come right up to me, sea lions play with you in the ocean and a hawk ate breakfast just feet from where we stood one morning.
Getting to and from the Galapagos is a bit of a pain. Flying via Guayaquil on the coast, the journey takes some six hours or more travelling from the hotel until we finally got to the boat in Academy Bay in Santa Cruz. Arrival at Baltra airport was bedlam and chaos, then there was a bus ride to the ferry, a short ferry ride across the passage between Baltra & Santa Cruz and finally an hours bus ride more or less to Puerto Ayora where we got a panga (dingy) out to the small/medium sized motorised yacht that was to be our home for the next few days. Although a large part of the day had been taken up with the transfer, we had a late lunch and then did have time to visit El Chato near Santa Rosa in the Highlands (highest point is Cerro Crocker at just 864m - remember we´ve been at almost 3,000m in Quito) to see Giant Tortoises in the wild. While waiting for the panga ride back there were Sally Lightfoot crabs, pelicans and blue-footed boobies (they´re seabirds for anyone whose wondering) near the jetty. Unfortunately I missed dinner the first night: one of life´s great ironies - I may travel the world but get travel sick and this particular night there was a lot of swell with the boat rocking quite profusely. The drugs worked eventually though and slept ok until the engines started at 3.30am to travel to the next mornings destination.
Must have gone to sleep again though as the following morning we found ourselves in a nice quiet bay and breakfast was an altogether much better affair. Our first stop of the day was a wet landing on the island of Santa Fe (also called Barrington), a fairly small island but great for watching sea lions - well tripping over them on the beach. Along the island´s northern shore is the forest of giant 10m high Opuntias (Prickly Pear Cactus). Here we got to see the endemic subspecies Santa Fe land iguana, a Galapagos Hawk, Galapagos Mockingbirds, pelicans, blue-footed boobies and lots of colourful lava lizards. Snorkelling in the bay we saw some rays and fish. The afternoon visit was to South Plaza. At only 1km long and 100m wide, it is one of the smallest islands in the Galapagos but has one of the largest populations of Land Iguanas. It also hosts a large number of Marine Iguanas and even hybrid land-marine iguanas that occurs nowhere else in the Galapagos. We saw more sea lions, blue-footed boobies, gal shearwaters and lots of other seabirds.
Cerro Dragon (Dragon´s Hill) on another part of Santa Cruz was our first stop on Day 2. It has a population of giant land iguanas hence the name. It is also home to marine iguanas, sally lightfoot crabs, galapagos pintails, various finches (of the famous Darwin´s Finches collection) and other birds. The land iguanas were like little dragons and we watched a couple of males having a bit of a brawl at each other for some time. The afternoon was a dry landing at Bartolome Island (also called Bartholomew) - created by two volcanic cinder cones with a sandy inlet (double-sided beach) in between. A hike to the summit of the island (one of the cinder cones) provided a panoramic view of the island and Santiago in the distance. Andy particularly liked this island because it was a fantastic example of various geological features common to several of the islands including spatter cones and lava tubes. Personally I thought it was like a moonscape. There wasn´t much life surviving here that we could see apart from the rugged lava cactus. We took a panga ride along the coastline around the base of the volcanic tower of the other cinder cone where we came across a few of the rare Galapagos Penguins. There are only 800 pairs and we saw about 1/2 dozen of them. Under the base was also good snorkelling, plenty of fish and a few people got a glimpse of the expert swimming penguin as it rocketed past at high speed.
Day 3 started in Rabida Island´s Red beach where we had our daily interaction with sea lions. A short trail leads to a salt water lagoon which used to be used by flamingos but not anymore. Juvenile sea lions now occupy it for playtime and we watched a couple of them frolicking in the water. Back on the beach amongst low-lying bushes were nesting Brown Pelicans. At one point as if on cue, two of the pelicans started mating! It was very short and not so sweet! There were also a few finches. Santiago or James was our afternoon stop. This has a raised beach, now protected by a lava flow which through weathering has lots of grottos and caverns connected to the sea. Here was where fur seals hauled themselves onto rocky ledges to sleep during the day or cool off in the grottos. The grottos provide protection from their predators during the day as fur seals are night hunters. We got another snorkel again today. Plenty more fish in the sea and some were the size of dinner plates!!!
Located on the second-largest island in the archipelago of Isla Santa Cruz is the picturesque Black Turtle Cove, mangrove fringed lagoons providing nurseries for a large number of animals. We could only negotiate this by panga but on our way into the lagoons we witnessed a Blue-Footed Booby feeding frenzy where there were literally hundreds of boobies diving for fish and other prey, the sort of scene that you would only see on something that David Attenborough had done! Even the guide said it was unusual to see one of these kind of sights and he´s been doing this for some 19 years. It was very peaceful cruising through the lagoons and we got to see plenty of sea turtles (even one couple trying to mate), a large school of golden rays and baby sharks. In the afternoon we continued onto North Seymour, which is home to abundant animal life including swallow-tailed gulls, magnificent frigate birds, great frigate birds and blue-footed boobies. This is where alot of the aforementioned birds nest and we were able to walk within a metre of sitting birds. We watched a couple of male blue-footed boobies performing their courtship ritual to females without success. One was particularly persistent and the pair came within our circle to do their performance. Even then the female was having nothing of it and eventually flew off - we all pitied the male as he had made a great effort. Some of the male frigatebirds were desperately trying to attract females and had their red throat pouches extended. There was a small number of land iguanas on the island. They don´t naturally occur here but were bought from Baltra (also known as South Seymour) as part of an experiment. During WWII when Baltra was used as an airbase (why there is an airport there today) all the naturally occuring iguanas were killed out and the population has been re-established from the thriving iguana population on North Seymour. A few are kept on the island today incase of any disasters at the airport wiping out the population again.
A rough 10-hour overnight bumpy rolling rollercoaster of a boat ride landed us in the rather quieter Garner Bay on Espanola Island the next morning. Espanola is the oldest and southernmost of the islands, 61km2 in size and estimated to be 3.5 million years old. We first went for a walk up the white sandy beach avoiding sleeping sea lions up to the mid-beach rocks which are as far as we were permitted to go. Here Hood Mockingbirds, a subspecies of Mockingbird endemic to just this island, were picking flies off the sea lions. On the rocks were Sally Lightfoot crabs and a unique subspecies of marine iguana. Only on this island are the marine iguanas black and coloured, usually red but sometimes green or other colours. On every other island they are totally black. We had two snorkels, one off the beach where we saw a sting ray as well as lots more dinner plate sized fish and a second off the panga where a couple of sea lions came and played & swam with us in the water for a good time. The afternoon, still on Espanola but on the western side, we stopped at Punta Suarez where we followed a 2km trail through the rookery of the Waved Albatross, one of which was nesting right on the edge of the path. Espanola is the nesting site to vitually the entire worls population of these birds and its the only albatross that nests at the equator and in the tropics. Large numbers of the yet unseen Nasca Boobies (formerly known as Masked Boobies) were seen nesting as well as other seabirds including our old friends the Blue-footed Boobies. Red-billed tropic birds were also quite abundant as were more of the red-coloured marine iguanas and yet more sea lions. A huge blowhole where the surf is forced througha natural rock formation (spraying the cliffs with water and keeping it green during the dry season) spouting seawater 15-20m in the air was also here. If you´ve ever watched the BBC Galalpagos Series they showed it on there. We also saw Galapagos Doves, a Striped Galapagos snake and a Galapagos Hawk. Here the Tortoise breeding programme will eventually indirectly help the hawk increase its numbers. The young, forced from their parents territory when they are old enough due to lack of space, have no food in the highlands because the giant tortoise was almost wiped out. With the captive breeding programme the first rehabilitated tortoises will soon be breeding and therefore providing a source of food for the hawks.
The final day around the islands we went to Floreana Island. Firstly a panga ride brought us into contact with more of the rare galapagos penguins, turtles and yet more sea lions. We stopped at Post Office Bay to drop off postcards. Early British Whalers set up a barrel to leave messages for ships returning to England to take home and picking up messages from those on their way back. Although the barrel has been changed a few times, the mail system has been more or less in continuous use since then. Leave a postcard and pick one up to hand deliver to someone near you. Eventually I will have one hand-delivered to me! Then we had 3 snorkel points around the Corona del Diablo (Devil´s Crown) where we saw several sharks including my first Hammerhead Shark, sting ray, spotted eagle ray, sea lions and lots more fish. I was fine until the third drop where the surge and currant was just too much and I started feeding the fish and had to be plucked out of the water. but I´d seen everything everyone else had seen. Our final stop was Cormorant Point, home to Greater Flamingos and where the Galapagos Green Turtle nests, before heading off for a very bumpy 6-hr ride back to Santa Cruz.
Yesterday, off the boat and on our way back to the chaos and bedlam that was Baltra airport, we stopped at the Charles Darwin Research Station to visit Lonesome George, the last Giant Tortoise of the subspecies from Pinta Island. We saw hatching tortoise eggs, the nursery which cares for young tortoises until they are about three years old and corrals housing female and male adult tortoises - some of the males weighing a ton each of both the domed and saddleback varieties.
It was an interesting time for us to pick to visit these islands being:
- The 199th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin
- The 149th anniversary of the publication of Origin of The Species
- The 49th anniversary of the founding of the Charles Darwin Foundation in Galapagos and the Galapagos National Park
Due to 2009 being a significant year for the Galapagos a collaboration of organisations across the UK has been set up, called Darwin200. They are all celebrating Darwin's 200th birthday in February 2009 with an exciting programme of activities starting from July 2008 to the end of 2009. For more information about Darwin200 and to view some of the activities, please visit www.darwin200.org.
We made it back to Quito late last night. We moved back from the hotel to our original hostel who are dropping us off at the airport very early tomorrow morning for a very long journey back home. I hope you´ve enjoyed the chronicles nearly as much as I´ve enjoyed the actual trip.
Until the next time, adios
Kath & Andy
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