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Published: November 29th 2014
Friday 28
thNovember2014 The Inland Highlands: Santa Rosa
We hoped to see some giant tortoises today. We didn´t expect to see hundreds of them. The inland highland areas of Santa Cruz Island are quite lush, with untouched vegetation that the tortoises thrive on. Sadly, elsewhere, as mentioned in a previous blog, their habitat has been destroyed and numbers have decreased. Not here, however. The Santa Rosa region is an oasis for these magnificent gentle giants. One has to be careful driving along the tracks, because they don´t understand the Green Cross Code and they amble along all over the place, at leisure.
We left the hostel early in the morning and went with a guide (just the two of us). He was a lovely character, but not particularly knowledgeable and informative, as one expects a guide to be. Basically, he was just our truck driver. When asked how many tortoises lived in the area, he replied “Muchas, muchas!” Later on, when we went to the lava tubes, when asked how many years ago the lava tunnels were formed, he replied “Muchas, muchas!” Later still, when asked how many years ago, the volcanic action was so violent
Pelican with attitude!
"Hey, hey you! Get out of my bay!"that it created the huge craters that we saw, he replied “Muchas, muchas!”
So, anyway, we saw “muchas tortugas gigantes”, lots of giant tortoises roaming free, protected, safe-guarded and now beginning to reproduce in greater numbers. They live in beautiful countryside.
After photographing “muchas tortugas”, we went down a huge naturally-formed lava tube, a tunnel created by the passage of enormous amounts of molten lava: lava which had gouged and burnt its way through the rock. This all happened many years ago, “muchas años pasada”! Our third stop on this little half-day tour, was to Los Gemelos, and the Scalesia Forest. Here we saw two very large collapsed craters (formed “muchas años pasada”). We followed a nice trail half way around the rim of each crater. The Scalesia tree plays a very important role in the island ecosystem because it traps and collects rainwater and provides sustenance for many other plants, mosses and lichens. These trees also provide an important habitat for eight species of Darwin’s Finches as well as the Red Flycatcher. We saw several finches but we didn´t see a Flycatcher. We did, however, see a
Gentle Giant
250 kilo of tortoise! pair of Galapagos Blue-eyed Doves. Our guide dropped us back to the hostel at lunchtime. It was a very good morning´s expedition.
Traveller´s tip: the ATM machines on Santa Cruz, and there are very few of them, frequently run out of money. Instead of a message telling the anxious customer that this is the case (as happens at home in Spain sometimes, in the peak tourist season), here the message just says “rejected”. One automatically thinks that the card has been blocked for some reason, necessitating a long-distance call to one´s bank. This afternoon, we did just that. We didn’t really need to get cash out today, but thought it would be a good idea because we are on a snorkel tour tomorrow and leave very early on Sunday morning to go to Isabela Island (where we think there may not be many ATM machines). We just thought it would be a good idea to have a bit more cash out. Having had both of our cards rejected for our joint UK account, we hastened to a telephone and called the UK (quite a cheap phone call surprisingly). The bank assured us that there was nothing wrong with our
"Stand still please!...
...I need a photo of you!" cards whatsoever. John´s conversation with the telephone banking guy, who was typically helpful and efficient (as they always are) concluded something like this…
John “Thanks so much for checking for us, it is probably just that banking here is a bit crap. A lot of people have problems withdrawing cash from the ATMs here.”
Telephone banking guy: (with a chuckle) “Well, I cannot possibly say that the system there is “crap” of course, so let´s just say that perhaps there is a problem with how they try to process information from the ATM machines!
We subsequently found out that a small German cruise ship had come into the harbour the night before and the passengers had emptied the ATMs of cash! Once we knew that our cards were OK, we went in to the bank and asked if we could get money over the counter on our cards. We were refused: cash for nationals only, foreigners would have to wait until Monday, when presumably more cash is flown in (or printed – joke)! No use to us, we leave here on Sunday, but we don´t need it, it was just wanting some extra. Anyway, we have just
"Who´s a pretty girl, then?"
Females have flatter shells, males have the hump! eaten a meal in a very nice restaurant. Since it is one of the few here that accepts bank cards, we paid with one of the UK bank cards to test that it really was OK. No problem, so no worries! So, off to bed now and up early again tomorrow, to see some more creatures, great and small, and hopefully to swim with some of them.
Saturday 29
th November 2014 Bahia de Puerto Ayora
We awoke to a cloudy day and the sea, which has been turquoise, green and blue all the week, looked dull, grey and decidedly choppy. Not the best day for snorkelling. We packed our stuff and headed down to the harbour to get our boat for the “Bay Tour” as planned, praying that the weather would improve later in the morning. It didn´t, but we still had a great boat trip! We took our own masks and snorkels but used the flippers (fins) provided by the tour company. We left the harbour, and in no time at all, the captain cut the engines because there was an enormous Manta Ray swimming about. The black and white tips of his wings were cutting the
"I have not got the hump!"
Tortoise off for a stroll around surface about three metres apart: huge creature! Shortly after this we saw some shark.
Our first port of call was the “Loberia”, the sea lion nursery, a rocky islet where sea lions give birth and nurse their young. It was so rough out there today, with strong currents, that we couldn’t anchor up; it is forbidden to land anyway, but had we been able to anchor and get in the water, we could have swam with the sea lions. Next, we sped around the headland to “Playa de los Perros”, “Dog Beach”, once inhabited by wild introduced dogs. Now that the dogs have been evacuated, the Marine Iguanas can come here once again to lay their eggs. Millions of years ago, their ancestors came from Ecuador on natural rafts, as animals have crossed the oceans for millennia, and on arrival found a barren landscape, no vegetation, only lava rock. They started to eat algae from the sea, learnt to dive and swim and evolved to become the Marine Iguanas we see here today. Marine Iguanas only live in the Galapagos. They are not to be seen anywhere else on the planet. We were hoping to
also see Blue-footed Boobies here, but today they were in hiding!
Close to Dog Beach, there is a grotto where sharks go during the day to sleep, hunting at night. We were able to look down and see a large group of them, between fifteen and twenty. A constant ebb and flow of tidal water through the grotto enables the shark to rest, without swimming all the time, as it passes water over their gills. This fascinating place is called “La Grieta de las Tintoreras”. “Tintoreras¨ are reef sharks, white tips, blues and tigers.
Our snorkel site was just around the corner from the shark grotto, and we were rather pleased that none came to swim with us, well, none that we saw; our guide assured us that they would all be in the grotto “sleeping”. The visibility wasn´t fantastic, being a dull day, but it was a great bay to snorkel in (off the boat, anchored off-shore). We saw a sea lion swimming about, we saw turtles surfacing and various fish and pelicans diving for fish. John had a serious encounter with a pelican. The pelican came right up to him, in his face, then
hissed and spread his wings a bit; they were almost beak to nose! Viv was the only one who saw a large green turtle swimming under the water, whilst snorkelling, but we both saw several of them surfacing once everyone was back on board the boat.
If the weather had been better and sunny like it was earlier in the week, today would have rated as one of our all-time greatest snorkel trips, because there is so much life in these seas, thanks to the convergence of currents. As it was, it was still pretty impressive. A great day out. Now, back down to earth, and on terra firma, we have to pack. We leave here at 6.30 a.m. tomorrow morning, to get the boat to Isla Isabela.
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