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Published: November 7th 2006
Galapagos is a magical place. It's one of those places about which you hear so much, and think - it can't be true. It can't really exist in reality.
But it does. No doubt it is one of the highlights of my (so far) 8-month trip to South America.
Only here you can get to those animals as close as you want. And there are so many of them, and of so many types! And non of them is afraid. The feeling is incredible. Just walking around in an animal paradise and seeing different animals every few steps.
The abundance of the animals can't really be described. The best example for it might be Puerto Baquerizo Moreno which is a town in Isla San Cristobal - one of the inhabited islands of the Galapagos archipelago. There you can see sea lions sprawled in the gardens of a few houses in the beach front, almost like pets, as if it's absolutely normal. You really don't need to go far here to see wildlife. It's simply there.
Wanting to save some money I've tried to play it smart, so I flew to the islands directly without booking a tour in advance,
as it was supposed to be the low season. There was indeed a smaller number of tourists, but also most of the boats were in repair.
So I could either wait in Puerto Ayoro, which is a really small place, for a week, go with a really lousy boat or with a first class one.
Since I got a good last minute offer for it, I've decided to spoil myself.
This is how I found myself in the incredible boat of Santa Cruz, touring the Galapagos islands like a king. The boat is actually a floating 5 stars hotel with all the services and luxuries you can expect for in such a place.
The only down side was that the average age of the tourists was around 60, but I did manage to find some younger people.
When you think about the Galapagos, you think about tropical islands, hot water and allot of vegetation, since you know that they are located at the Equator. Reality is far from that.
Actually the islands are influenced by many currents, which command the local weather. Since the strongest one comes from the south pole, the water is pretty cold. Also since most
of the islands are flat, no rain congests above them, and most of them are dry, desert like.
The most interesting of them in this aspect is the island of Santa Cruz, which has a hill of few hundred meters, so the climate there is the most varied, and changes from a dry beach front, to a humid forest on the hill top, and has everything in the middle.
No doubt snorkeling was the best thing I've done in this tour, floating just a few centimeters from tropical fish, and even seeing a penguin passing by...
Visiting Galapagos was interesting from an intellectual point of view as well, as it is the best proof for Darwins' theory of evolution. This is where he thought of it, and for the first time presented an explanation to the development of life, without the necessary involvement of a Divine force. There are some very interesting examples for it in the face of few species, like the Finch birds, that had evolved and developed from a common ancestor, to different species, each being more adapted to the distinct environmental conditions occurring on each island.
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