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Published: July 13th 2006
Marine Iguana´s
As soon as we got off the boat the wildlife was there...We returned this afternoon from an unforgettable trip to the Galapagos Islands. Basically we spent 5 days, 4 nights on a 16 passenger, 7 crew boat, sailing around the Galapagos Islands. We saw 6 of the literally thousands of islands in the archipeligo which is a mere drop in the proverbial bucket, but it allowed us to see more than you could dream of seeing. In fact, we saw many of every single animal we hoped to see. And we´re not talking ¨Hey, see that spot in the distance that´s a ...¨ We´re talking could have touched it. This may be an incredibly long blog so perhaps you should take a minute now, go and get a cerveza, go to the bathroom and then get comfy... Here goes...
Here is some necessary Galapagos terminology- animals are either endemic (found there and only there) wild (found there, but other places as well) or introduced (brought in by pirates, sailors, the spanish, darwin, the farmers that now live there, my shoes etc).
The first introduced species that we saw was 50 school children on a field trip to Galapagos. They are noisy and smell bad. Some of the behaviors we witnessed
Marine Iguana´s
Some were pretty big... were pushing the flight attendant call button repeatedly, running up and down the aisles, and going ¨Whooaaaahhh¨as a group whenever the plane gained or lost altitude. As a side note for the teachers in the crowd. Can you imagine the faces on the CBE big wigs when they saw your Galapagos Islands Field trip request form? Luckily after Shelagh and another guy on our trip blocked the airplane aisles with their bodies allowing the adults on the plane a chance to deplane these critters went their own way never to be seen again (by us at least)
We landed on the island of Baltra (which appears to basically just have the airport and not much more on it) took a bus, then a ferry, then a bus, then a dingy (heretofor known as a panga) to our boat. I´m not lying, throw in a train and a unicycle and we would have had every possible mode of transport. After a quick lunch on the boat we headed back to Santa Cruz Island (one of the bigger ones) to the Charles Darwin Research Center. Oh, on the Panga ride TO the boat we got very excited to see two Sea
Giant Tortoises
The Galapagos Islands were so called because the movements of the tortoises were thought to be akin to that of a galloping horse...slightly slower perhaps! Lions lying on the back of another boat. turns out they wouldn´t be the only sea lions we´d see... As we got off the panga we were greeted by a whole bunch of iguanas sunning themselves on the dock (also not the only iguanas we´d see). Then a lava lizard scooted across our path. Looking at the volcanic rocks on the shoreline we realized they were crawling with crabs. We were starting to think we were in some very good Disney display and that these animals were animatronic. There can´t possibly be animals like that just all over the place can there?...
So the Charles Darwin Research Center is the main research and conservation body in the Galapagos. They are working for the preservation of the wild and endemic species and the erradication of the introduced species. At this particular center they have many land tortoises and a tortoise breeding program as well as some sort of save the iguanas thing (although it just occured to me that the iguanas didn´t seem particularly endangered)
The star of the center is ¨Lonesome George¨ He was found 30 years ago on one of the islands and they realized he was
the only remaining member of his species of giant tortoise. So they brought him to the center in the hopes that they could breed him with another female to at least provide a hybrid. So, they put George in a pen with 5 beautiful females and.......nothing. George just isn´t into it. They´ve tried all sorts of things (candle light, champagne, oysters, viagra) and nothing. They´re now starting to think they may need to introduce him to Fred instead. Wouldn´t create any babies, but George might not be so lonesome anymore. There is actually talk of cloning him. Eeek.
The other males in the center certainly didn´t share Georges desire for bachelor hood. We actually saw tortoises mating. Now, in terms of animal porn, it´s not exactly fast paced. It basically just looked like two tortoises leaning on each other, with the occasional minor repositioning. We have photos (I know, it´s a bit voyeuristic, but admit it you would have taken photos too) but the tortoises were discreet and hiding under a bush so they may be hard to make out (no pun intended).
There was also one tortoise in with a group of males who was a bit
dueling tortoises
These guys decided to get ¨fresh¨ with each other and then chased each other round the enclosure. of a rascal. He was trying to start fights, mount the other males, and even caused a high speed tortoise chase. That was funny. One tortoise really did outrun the other, but let me tell you their definition of run is a bit different than most animals.
There is a tortoise breeding program there but we didn´t get to see the babies very well because the staff were at their staff party that afternoon! They breed them in captivity, keep them in totally protected pens until they´re two, then partially protected pens until they´re five and then release them back onto the islands they should be on. By then they´re big enough that they don´t have to worry about the cats, dogs, pigs, rats, and goats that have been introduced by people and now run wild on many islands. They are working hard to erradicate these species and many of the islands are free from one or more of them. Shelagh wants to go back to the galapagos some time and ride around on a helicopter shooting goats. I´m not really sure where that wish comes from. By the way the first people there thought the turtles Galloped, like
The first of many sea lions...
They really liked to pose (this is the first of many similar characteristics to heather) horses, so...Galapagos
Also, on the boat we met our guide Roberto who we would soon come to adore. He is a level 3 naturalist on galapagos which is the highest level and he knows EVERYTHING about Galapagos, but he´s also a very good story teller, so maybe he was just lying. He must have said Ï love Galapagos¨20 times a day. By the end of the trip he had us all talking like him.
Day 2
We had sailed overnight to the island of Floreana and we disembarked for our first nature hike. When we got to the beach it was full of Sea Lions. Now first, you must learn to pronounce Sea Lions like they do in Galapagos. As the Philipino girl, working in Singapore, going to Harvard for her MBA who speaks philipino, mandarin, fuk-yen, spanish and english says...¨Spanish is like the philipine language in that the emphasis is placed on the penultimate syllable¨ No offense, but I haven´t heard that sentence coming out of most of your mouths. Anyway, what that means is that they are Sea LIons... and man are they cute. They roll around on the beach, take naps, honk at each other,
Its a bundle...
I have a feeling this is a Scottish expression...but they all jump on top of each other... crawl over each other, and take another nap. Then we went to an in land lake to see flamingos. Roberto explained the mystery of why they tuck one leg up under themselves. It´s because if they tucked two legs in, they´d fall in the water. See, hard science. You can actually see the trails they leave in the sandy bottom as they wander along trying to stir up shrimp. That is also what gives them their pink color. They could give Thomas a run for his money in a shrimp eating contest. Watch out Thomas, you may turn pink. Roberto also warned us about the mocking birds. They LOVE water, and they know people have it. So they wander around you, up to you, jump on your shoulder if you´re holding a water bottle, peck at it etc.
Then we went snorkling around a rock outcrop called the Devils Crown off the island, It was COLD water and a bit of an intimidating snorkling for those that hadn´t done it before. There was a substantial current, very deep water, and you had to jump in off the panga. Shelagh and I loved it. Other than Shelagh being very bad
Pink Flamingo
looking for shrimp at ¨the buddy system¨and just swimming off on her own...it was great. We saw parrot fish, starfish, lots of other nameless (well to us at least) fish including a HUGE school of thousands of fish. We saw a couple of white tipped reef sharks. They are not very big and completely harmles, but sharks nonethe less. At the very end we saw several sea turtles deep in the water. It was great!
That afternoon we went to a different part of Florean island to go to the Post Office. This is a post office like no other... in the 1800´s the whalers who were busy decimating the whale and tortoise population of the Galapagos had no way of sending or receiving word to or from home. They would often be gone to sea for 5 years and that was too long to wait for their Visa bills so they set up a post office. From that time and still now, it´s a barrel, inland a bit from the beach. You open it up and pull out the mail. You rifle through it looking for mail addressed to anywhere you´re headed. You take those pieces of mail and when you
Big crab
they were everywhere...and not scared get to the intended country you either pop it in the local mail, or deliver it by hand. It cut the time down for receiving news to only a few months typically. Unfortunately Shelagh and I didn´t have any postcards without any stamps on them, but we did pick up a couple of pieces of mail headed to Calgary.
We then took a Panga ride (only half the group at a time because one of our Panga motors decided to cut out for the rest of the trip) around part of the island and out to a small rock outcrop ( I don´t know what´s an island and what´s rocks hopefully no one from the Darwin Center is grading me on this blog). The highlight of this trip was PENGUINS!!! Yup, Penguins. Yup, we´re practically sitting right on the freaking equator - who knew? They´re just called Galapagos penguins and of course they´re endemic to Galapagos. They´re tiny, probably 25 cm tall and we only saw a group of 7 of them, but we saw penguins. Apparently there are quite a few mating pairs on that little island and also in other places in Galapagos. The antarctic current runs
The whalers mail box
I don´t think that postcards were the original intent... up there and therefore...penguins. We also saw our first Bluefooted Boobie (hence the name of this blog entry - sorry you had to wait so long for it) and some Herons. Lots of people get really excited by Herons, but having grown up by a lake in Saskatchewan that actually has Blue Herons nesting on it...it´s a little anticlimactic. I should probably note at this point for those of you who don´t know me that well that I hate birds. I really really do. BUT, by that I mean pigeons and seagulls and boring birds that are everywhere and poop on your head and make a mess and are noisy. Penguins, Blue Boobies and the other birds to come are a totally different...kettle of birds?
Okay, I´m going to end this entry here because I realize that you´ve all gotten fired from your jobs for spending too much time on personal internet use at work. Shelagh is not able to get photos up right now but look for them in another day or two.
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Lorraine
non-member comment
copulation
Ok, so you got pics of the tortoises mating, they sound somewhat discreet compared to the elephants (mostly male) in Zimbabwe preparing for mating! I couldn't keep my eyes off them, but my husband (who is not in any way a prude) wouldn't let me take pictures!!!!! The islands sound fantastic, now I need to go back to Ecuador just to see the Galapagos. Maybe I will drag Ken for some mating fun! Alas poor George, he may not be gay, just old! After all in tortoise years, that has to be at least a 100!