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Published: November 10th 2008
Giant tortoise
Charles Darwin Research Station, Puerto Ayora, Santa CruzThe Galapagos islands and cribbage are a natural connection in my mind, as the first pictures I recall seeing of them were on a pack of cards that my sister C had brought back from her first tour of the archipelago a few years ago. Boobies, baby sea lions, and even Lonesome George had stared at me from the deck as we played the highly competitive, obscenity-strewn games that constitute an evening's entertainment when the whole family is at home. I'd then looked at her own photos and finally searched on Flickr, and knew that I would have to pay a visit there as part of my South American wanderings.
The Galapagos are most famous for providing the spur for Darwin to formulate his theory (fact?) of natural selection, albeit 20 years after his 5 week visit on the Beagle. In particular the different species of finches on the various islands, descended from a common ancestor but with evolutionary adaptations to their beaks in order to deal with different food sources, were to point him in the right direction. The Galapagos are also famous for their large number of endemic species, a situation arising from the fact that, like Hawaii,
Swallow-tailed gull
South Plaza
Relabelled due to Margaret's comment below - thanks! they are a remote island chain.
A cruise would be the only way to see certain of the islands, and only an 8 day one could do justice to both the place and the expense of getting there. After spending many hours of researching, I threw in my lot with Enchanted Expeditions and their boat Cachalote.
The passengers for the cruise were all to fly out to the islands together from Quito, and as I headed to the airport there was the usual nervous anticipation of meeting the others, plus the issue of whether I'd be sharing. Having stayed in many a dorm over the last 3 years, I'm not too fussed about sharing however I can see that if you're on an annual 2 week vacation then you might be a little disappointed to have to share with some scruffy backpacker such as me. However my room-mate Doug proved to be an amusing companion and, apart from me blotting my copybook by hanging up a pair of damp socks that stank out the cabin within hours, we established a good relationship based on a shared love of bitching and gossip.
8 of the 13 paying passengers
were Brits on a combined jungle/Galapagos tour and had just spent several days together in El Oriente. They were sufficiently advanced in years that this previous acquaintance didn't get in the way of mingling with the rest of us, as it might have done in a less mature crowd (I was the fourth youngest passenger). They all seemed to have been on a variety of nature holidays in the past, with two of them being subscribers to a turtle magazine, and one showing the colours of a true twitcher by trembling with excitement at the appearance of any new bird.
Their group leader was none other than Quentin Bloxam, sidekick of Gerald Durrell back in the days when Durrell was writing books like
The Aye-aye and I, and now a director of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. A knowledgeable and interesting chap, he generously made the time to give me some tips and show me some of his pictures from Madagascar (his main area of expertise), which has cemented it firmly in my itinerary for next year. He also had some serious camera equipment, and it was no surprise to discover that his work is dotted through various guidebooks.
The remaining
passengers were a wildlife reserve manager from Western Australia and a Dutch/German couple now also living in Australia but currently in the middle of a South American trip even longer than mine. The dynamic in the group was generally good, with any complaints I may have wanted to make here being silenced by the "What happens in Ga'gos, stays in Ga'gos" rule.
Our flight from Quito stopped first at Guayaquil, where we waited on the plane while there was an exchange of passengers, then flew a further couple of hours to arrive at the main airport in the Galapagos on the island of Baltra, in dull and blustery conditions. We were met by our guide Monica, who was to accompany us on all our excursions for the following week. Monica was truly excellent, with a total command of all the facts regarding the islands, their history and their wildlife, and a calm manner honed from running a pre-school when she isn't guiding. Controlling unruly groups was clearly nothing new to her. We were herded onto a bus and taken the short distance to the dock from where we would transfer to our boat. A few dozing, smelly Galapagos sea
lions were lazing around on the dock, together with scaly black marine iguanas and brightly coloured (and correspondingly skittish) Sally Lightfoot crabs (the name comes from their speed), and my anticipation rose yet higher at the thought of what would await us in the real sightseeing spots of the islands.
The short hop to the boat gave me my first panga ride in the islands, with panga being the local word for an inflatable dinghy, aka a Zodiac. The Cachalote is a schooner crewed by 6 and, like most of the "sailing" boats in the Galapagos, the sails are essentially just for show and are rarely used, with an engine providing the main propulsion. However the masts provided convenient roosting spots for various seabirds, a picturesque sight until one's first receipt of a turd on the head. The interior was predominantly furnished in wood, with a comfortable common/dining area kept pleasantly chilly via aircon. There was plenty of outdoor lounging space too, and the only parts of the boat that felt cramped were the cabins. I was barely able to stuff my rucksack away in the sole storage space, and Doug's suitcase had to remain on the floor for
the duration. The beds were bunks with the top bunk being smaller but having the advantage of the views through the porthole. Taking a shower in the cubiclette was always interesting in the confined space, but we had hot water so it would have been churlish to complain. That said, I used the cabin purely for sleeping so its compactness was never an issue.
The food was extremely good, both in terms of quality and quantity, with 3 decent meals per day plus snacks after snorkelling. I surprised myself by only drinking 2 beers on the whole trip, though was also forced to down various unpalatable cocktails at the welcome drinks, leaving drinks, and Equator crossing drinks. The early starts, constant activity, and occasional exposure to the sun made for a fairly tiring schedule, and it was a rare night when there was anyone left up after 9:30PM - beer would have sent me to bed even earlier.
In general we did 2 excursions per day, with snorkelling available on most days too. In between each excursion was often a bit of sailing, with the longer hauls saved for overnight. Though we never encountered conditions that a hardened
sailor would bat an eyelid at, we certainly had some heavy swells that had the sea breaking over the portholes. The rolling of the boat would have had me reaching for the sick bucket if I hadn't supplemented my diet with regular doses of dramamine, but even without any motion sickness it was still a balance exercise to negotiate the corridors and stairs when we were under way. On two occasions at dinner, the plates and cutlery were moving around the table as if a poltergeist had joined the manifest. I knew that I must have achieved my sea legs when, on the first day I was in Puerto Ayora after the cruise, I found the ground moving in a disconcerting fashion.
I'm going to write the rest of the blog more as a trip report in 2 parts, as I found little in the way of trip reports when I was researching boats so it may be of use to future travellers. It may not be the most interesting way of presenting the information but ... tough.
Day 1 Baltra, South Plaza, Santa Cruz (Puerto Ayora) From Baltra, we sailed for the island of South Plaza where
first we performed an emergency evacuation drill to familiarise ourselves with the location of our lifejackets and the layout of the boat. It was cool and breezy on deck, but the pangas then delivered us to the warm shores of South Plaza, which turned out to be one of the most underrated islands in the archipelago. Before we'd even left the landing area, we had seen Galapagos sea lions (including a loudly honking "beachmaster" - the dominant male in the area - and a mother and pup), yellow-red land iguanas, marine iguanas, Sally Lightfoot crabs and a yellow-crowned night heron (normally nocturnal). The Galapagos sea lions have favourite sunbathing spots, some of which are separated from the sea by rough or steep terrain - over the week, we were to encounter the creatures in some unexpected places. The foliage was in its fall colours, low-lying plants displaying everything in the spectrum from red to green and punctuated by cacti. Black and white posts delineated a path through the landscape and I took the first of what was to be hundreds of photos throughout the cruise.
The trail led to, and then paralleled, the top of a sea cliff and
Crab versus bird
I'd call that a draw
South Plaza we watched as a flypast of frigatebirds (both great and magnificent), shearwaters, Nazca boobies, lava gulls, brown pelicans, red-billed tropic birds, and noddy terns took advantage of the air currents. Below, a shoal of yellow-tailed mullet was intermittently visible beneath the waves. It was a glorious sight, and I found it difficult to absorb the fact that we were only hours into the cruise yet had already seen so much.
In fact I was so overwhelmed by it all that I fell asleep when we returned to the Cachalote, being roused only when the bell was rung for dinner. At this point we were introduced to the crew. We were to have little interaction with either the captain or the cook throughout the cruise, but the other crew members were involved in piloting the pangas in addition to their other roles. Richard the barman/waiter/jack-of-all-trades proved to be entertaining due to the permanent presence of either a sulk or a sneer on his face, an interesting attitude for someone in the service industry. In fact the crew seemed to make a distinct effort to separate themselves from the passengers, as there was never a hello or buenos dias unless you
said it first. I can understand it must be a tough life working 9 weeks on 3 weeks off, but the pay in the Galapagos is significantly better than the mainland, and with much of that income being from tips I was surprised there was so little effort made to make the passengers feel more at home.
Day 2 Santa Cruz (Puerto Ayora and Highlands) Day 2 was giant tortoise day. The morning was devoted to a visit to the Charles Darwin Research Station in Puerto Ayora (the main tourist town in the archipelago). Giant tortoises used to roam the planet but now only exist in the Galapagos and the Seychelles due to hunting and predation. Early visitors to the Galapagos made a huge dent in the giant tortoise population of the islands - a giant tortoise can survive for a year without water, so filling up your ship's hold with them gives you a low-maintenance food source. One of the roles of the CDRS is to rebuild the population, and the complex contains various pens in which the tortoises (shells painted with an identification number) are raised, to be released into the wild at age 3.
The
most famous resident of the CDRS is Lonesome George (aka Solitario Jorge and on the 3 of clubs, I think), the sole surviving member of the Pinta subspecies who was airlifted off his island in 1971. The intervening years have seen a search for a potential mate, a process complicated by the fact that George seemed uninterested in breaking his multi-decade celibacy, but earlier this year he got back in the saddle with a female (with the impersonal name of 107) from a related subspecies and some offspring are expected in November 2008. George is big (about 200 pounds) and can crane his neck in a surprisingly giraffe-like fashion, but his movements are as ponderous and imponderable as one might expect.
The best photo opportunities were to be had in a pen that one could freely walk through and snap the inhabitants at close range. There was also a small section of the complex given over to land iguanas, which seemed as disinterested in bursts of speed as the tortoises.
We then had some free time to roam Puerto Ayora itself, whose main streets are filled with shops, restaurants and agencies aimed squarely at the tourist trade. It
would appear that the booby bird family was named purely to spawn an industry of souvenirs bearing the slogan "I love boobies".
After returning to the boat for lunch, we panga-ed back to Puerto Ayora and boarded a bus to the Highlands. The first sighting of the afternoon was the startling red of the vermillion flycatcher, a rare bright spot in the lush greenery under a grey, gently drizzling sky. With it just a bobbing dot, albeit a vividly coloured one, even with my zoom at its full extent I didn't succeed in capturing it on film but it could hardly have stood out more. We followed this with an amble through some fields where giant tortoises were conducting low-speed roaming. I passed on the opportunity to visit a lava tube and we finished the excursion at a pair of pit craters, by which time it was rather cold and breezy.
Dinner was a very basic spag bol that was remarkable for its ordinariness, until we realised the evening was the crew's final opportunity to see friends and family before we headed away from Puerto Ayora for the rest of the cruise. The journey to our next island,
Foliage
South Plaza Espanola, took the whole night, from 10:30PM until breakfast, and was sufficiently rough that sleep interruptions were frequent.
Day 3 Espanola (Gardner Bay and Punta Suarez) Espanola figures in many people's Top 3 Galapagos islands, so I was excited at what we would see there. The boat landings are all coordinated by the National Park authority so that there should never be a logjam of people in any one spot at any particular time of the day, however Espanola is sufficiently popular that we had 2 other boatloads of tourists with us. Fortunately you're allowed to roam free on the beach at Gardner Bay so we were able to space ourselves. The beach had a large selection of Galapagos sea lions including some 3 week old pups, and the rocks were literally crawling with marine iguanas and Sally Lightfoot crabs. Slightly further up the beach where the vegetation started could be found small lava lizards, with the species on Espanola having a much redder head and chest than in the rest of the archipelago. Close to shore, blue-footed boobies were plunge-diving for fish. With fresh water being scarce on the island, we had been warned that Galapagos mockingbirds would
likely follow us around as they now equated water bottles with fresh water, and I was amused to watch a woman walking down the beach obliviously dangling her water bottle and a mockingbird hopping along behind her in pursuit.
After the beach we returned to the boat then hit the pangas for some snorkelling. One cheapskate approach of the boat company was to charge a ludicrous amount for the equipment, which was doubly irritating as it wasn't in great condition. With the water being on the chilly side, most people wore wetsuits however the visibility wasn't great and overall it was rather ho-hum.
The afternoon saw us back on Espanola at Punta Suarez, with the sun putting in a bright and intense appearance that highlighted a carelessly unsunscreened patch of my left calf with sunburn. Punta Suarez was another marine iguana hotspot with a scattering of Galapagos sea lions, but the main emphasis was the birdlife. There were droves of nesting blue-footed boobies, and I saw the famous mating dance that these birds perform. I found their feet totally fascinating. Nearby was a nesting site for Nazca boobies, one common element of the two areas being the bleached
white appearance caused by gallons of bird crap. Ticking themselves off on the checklist were a pair of Galapagos hawks and some baby (like a dull-coloured Big Bird, their size almost comical) and adult waved albatrosses. We again found ourselves at a sea cliff and watched the various birds gliding and swooping with ease.
Our evening was spent sailing to Floreana, our arrival there after everyone's bed-time signalled by the industrial clanging of the anchor.
Day 4 Floreana (Punta Cormorant and Post Office Bay) There was an unscheduled panga ride this morning after breakfast to catch up with some bottle-nosed dolphins but, just 3 days in, I was already feeling the strain from such a full schedule and stayed on the boat until everyone returned and we were ready to land on Floreana. The green beach at Punta Cormorant only revealed its colour in close-up, the olivine crystals clear through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. The beach had little in the way of wildlife, just a few lazy Galapagos sea lions, some ghost crabs, and a solitary Galapagos penguin that pleased me inordinately with its pompous movements. I also saw the only frigatebird I was
Barking giant tortoise
Charles Darwin Research Station, Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz to see on the cruise with its red pouch visible, a mating display that did not take place in numbers on any of the islands we visited. After admiring the 5 shiny white teeth of a sea urchin, we headed inland to a brackish pool neighbouring a nesting site of a colony of greater flamingos. Apparently the pink colour comes from the algae that they eat, and if for some reason that is not present in their diet then they turn white. As they strode around, stirring up the pond bed and sieving the results for nutrients, they created wandering brown lines in the muddy waters. We passed a copse of incense trees, looking as though they'd been regularly planted as their acidic sap kills everything under their branches.
Continuing through to the other side of the island we arrived on a white beach filled with depressions representing old and new nesting sites for the Pacific green turtle. It's now mating season, with the turtles coming from great distances away. We saw some pairs gambolling in the surf, but turtle sex has little crossover appeal. Apparently the males never come on shore, and the females only do if they're
Lava lizard
Charles Darwin Research Station, Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz exhausted from mating or to lay eggs.
The day's snorkelling was at the Devil's Crown, a half-sunken volcanic caldera. We drifted in to the caldera on the current, then moved outside in the chill waters. The highlights were a couple of white-tipped reef sharks hiding in an underground cavern and a nearby Galapagos sea lion that insisted on swimming around with one of its flippers in the air.
In the afternoon we returned to the island, but this time to Post Office Bay. The main spot of interest there is a barrel into which you can post letters or postcards. Subsequent visitors to the barrel are supposed to flick through all the items inside and, if they find anything addressed to a place they're likely to be visiting in the near future, the intention is that they will then hand-deliver that item. This system in some shape or form has been in place there for over 200 years. Monica then regaled us with the settlement history of the island, containing plenty of intrigue and suggestions of foul play amongst the small band of Europeans who had moved there in the hope of establishing an idyll.
We had
Lonesome George
Aka Solitario Jorge
Charles Darwin Research Station, Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz a most pleasant sunset, assisted by the silhouette of the Sagitta, another (slightly more upmarket) sailing boat that's plying the same route around the islands, before entering the meat of the long, rough sail to the island of Isabela.
To be continued ...
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Jo Trouble
Jo McCarthy
Nice panorama!