Out on the lava bed

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Islas De Galapagos, Isla San Cristobàl, Puerto Baquerizo Moreno,
14-10-1990.

A small eatery on Puerto Baquerizo Moreno's quay with the fitting name Comedor Comida Rica - tasty food in the local lingo - is a perfect place for a meal and getting to know our new passengers - a spanish couple in their early forties - while we wait for the crew to load supplies.

It takes but a few hundert human steps to get away from the village though, where black eroded lava forms strange and mysterious shapes in an otherwise barren landscape where small cactus roots have found cracks and crevices, pools with herminite crabs, small inlets and rocky caves harbouring a varied marine sustained wildlife, all ot it so unique to these isolated patches of volcanic rock.

I walk alone now and without the necessary guide leaving my friends behind devouring Huevos fritos put in a bed of dark brown frigoles and tortillas, the only item on Comedor's Comida Rica's menu. Nobody to border me or a guide explaining Darwin's theories on Natural Selection in bad english and hoarsely pronounced spanish, just me surrounded by the inspiration of Mister Darwin's insights in Natural Selection, how it all really came about.

I sit down on the black lava bed admiring the marine iguanas basking in the sun, lightfooted crabs with big red shears run after smaller females, the bright red of their shears flashing threateningly to male competitors, hungry herons populating the low bushes behind the lava bed keep a keen eye on them no doubt waiting for me to depart so the can close in for the kill, dinner is served well before nightfall, crab meat a delicacy to heron stomaches.

This place is just perfect for an pastel of one of these iguanas soaking up the last of the day's sun, collecting solar warmth before tonight's hunt for small crusteceans and algae in the unpredictable ocean.

Tonight we'll do the long haul to Isla Santiago. Twelve hours of cruizing through rough seas according to our guide...I have no doubt our misschievious crew friends wanna test the Spanish bellies...I have no doubt when I wake up tomorrow the boat will be covered in the semi-digestive vomit of Huevos Fitos lying in a bed of dark brown Frigoles with tortillas, coming out of shaken Spanish insides.

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Photos

Nursing sea lion mother
on Isla San Crristobàl

resting sea lions
on Isla San Critobàl

pastel
of marine iguana

Comments

[annemarie van Zelst]

eindelijk gevonden
ik wist niet dat je hand klausman heette. Vrije vertaling naar het duits zeker... Groeten de buurvrouw