Galápagos Islands

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There is just one word to describe the Galápagos Islands which is either AwesomeHasToBeSeenToBeBelievedKindOfPlace or simply wow. Hope you understand that I had to add a million pictures I simply could not decide which to let out.

The history of the Islands is the reason why this place is so amazing. The Galapagos Islands are a group of volcanic islands which were created over a couple of million years through a static hotspot in the earths crust. The tectonic plates over the hotspot shift and new Islands are created every now and then even today. Therefore the island the furthest away from the hotspot are the oldest. The last proper volcanic eruption was in 1998. The Islands where never connected to the mainland and the animals and plants migrated at one stage to the Islands but afterwards had no contact with their brothers and sisters on the mainland. This explains the abundance of endemic species (flora and fauna) on the island. Over 50 percent of the plants and birds and 100 percent of the reptiles are endemic (mean they only exit here) to the Islands. The Islands were discovered by accident by the bishop of Panama in 1535 when his ship drifted off course. After that the Islands were used as a base, safe harbour and source of food (turtles) and water by whalers, sealers and pirates. The Islands were visited by Charles Darwin in 1835 which, after studying the various animals on the Islands, led him to the theory of evolution.
The Islands are today populated by very 30.000 inhabitants who live on five of the 13 major islands. The total landmasses of the Islands are 7882 sq km which is a lot bigger than what I expected.

As I mentioned I was lucky to get a tour in just three days after I arrived in Quito. I met already a couple of Dutch at the travel agency, which where also booking the tour. The rest of the passengers I met by chance on the plane to the Islands. Then the rumour started to spread that the cruise is not fully booked and that only nine of the possible fourteen beds were sold. It actually turned out that we were even luckier. One of the passengers didn’t show up so we were only eight people boarding the ship which was built to comfortably accommodate fourteen passengers. Sometime luck strikes and this time it was me who got struck. I ended up with a double room to myself! The ship is a modern catamaran and the only thing to complain about it is that it does not have a mast as it broke during a storm last November. So here we were eight backpackers on a luxury catamaran looked after by seven crew members. Not bad travelling backpacker style.

On the first day we went to a beautiful beach and saw our first sally lightfoot crabs, marine iguanas, flamingos and sea lions. As you can imagine we were quite trigger happy and took many pictures of the animals which we will see nearly every day. The main problem here is not to find something to take pictures of it, it is to decide which pictures to delete. On the first three days alone I kept 200 pictures out of (I guess) 400 that I took. Yes you can look forward to a long slide show of pictures of the Galapagos Island when I come home.
One thing that makes it easy to take good pictures is that the animals do not have any fear of humans. The island has been so long isolated and there have been no predators on the island that most of the animals lost their fear for humans. Most of them (especially the sea lions) are quite curious and come closer and closer to check out what the funny tourist behind his camera looks like. You are not allowed to touch the animals but sometimes they come and check you out and sniff you or brush against you. It is really great to see a baby sea lion baby come closer and closer to check you and your camera out.
Snorkelling and diving around the Island is also world class. While snorkelling I swam with very playful and curious sea lions, saw les playful white tipped reef sharks and lots of fish. I also did one dive where there was a high chance to see a bunch of hammerhead sharks. Unfortunately I didn’t see them but saw instead some sea turtles, an as usual playful sea lion which took pleasure in sniffing the turtles bum!, an one sea lion which swam playful around us and some white tipped sharks.

It doesn’t stop here. When we sailed from one spot to the other we saw sea turtles, some sting rays jumping out of the water doing back flips (or pancake flip as one girl put it) and a bunch of dolphins jumping. While we were anchored during the night we spotted at least 10-15 sharks around the boat. We were actually hoping for an unfair fight between the sharks and a sea lion which was also swimming around the boat but it turned out that the sea lion was chasing the sharks.

There are lots more animals to see including frigate birds, huge albatrosses with a wingspan of over 2.4 meters, various species of finks and many more birds. One of the coolest birds and the one that triggers the most jokes is the blue footed boobies (I’m not kidding boobies is the real name). They are also big revenue generators for the people who sell shirts with such classic lines “I love boobies” and the like.

If you have seen a documentation abut the Galapagos Islands then you have seen pictures of the unique marine Iguanas (the only ones which can swim). They are very common here and look like a mix between a gecko and a dinosaur and were definitely the blueprint for the thing in the recent Godzilla movie.

Apart from the Iguanas the gigantic Land tortoises are also a trademark of the Galapagos Islands. They can weight up to 250 kg and live over 150 years. They were in quite a bit of trouble as they were used as life meat source by olden day sailors and more recently due to the introduction of feral animals like goats, cats and donkeys which either killed the young ones or destroyed the nests. The population was dramatically reduced and as they are quite different from Island to Island (and even within) some of the subspecies where either completely wiped out or where close to extinction. In one case only one living exemplar “Lonesome George” of one subspecies was found which lives now in a breeding station. They tried to let him mate with a female from a closely related subspecies but he didn’t show any interest in having sex (rumours have it that he is more interested in a suitably shaped rock). Not surprisingly as it doesn’t seem to be easy to get on top of an adult tortoise.
Breeding stations for the tortoises were founded in the 70s to as the name suggest breed tortoises and release then later into their natural habitat. The breeding program is very successful and many species have been saved from extinction.

As the Islands are all volcanic they have the usual cone shape and various types of lava and lava tubes. Lava tubes are formed when lava cools don on the outside but the inside stays liquid. One the inside lava subsides a lava tunnel remains. Those tunnels can have a diameter of over 20 meters and can be kilometres long. They are not that great to look at but pretty cool anyway as you can imagine that some time ago glowing hot lava was running through them.

After the boat tour I spend another two days on the biggest Island called Isabella Island. There I did a horse trek to the second biggest crater in the world (keep those records coming) with a diameter of 9 km. Not that impressive as far as craters go but a nice trip anyway. The other day I spent lazily in a hammock and talking to some friends I met already in Colombia.

That’s it if you happen to come to Ecuador fork out the outrageous amount of money they want for a boat tour and do it. I highly recommend it

There I also a video of boobies diving for fish. It’s only half as boring as it sounds. As usual check out here How to play the videos on how to view it.

Next stop Peru

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Photos

Welcome committee
Sea lions taking over a bench at the pier. This was the first experience we had with animals on the Galapagos Islands

What are you looking at?
Young sea lion having a closer look at my camera

Bartolomé island
Apparently this Island was used when filming Master and Commander. The black stuff in the background is new lava which filled the bay which was at the same place before.

I love boobies
Naturally we are talking about birds. Blue-footed boobies to be exact. The coolest of all birds on the Galapagos Islands.

Land iguana
They come in various colors.

Soo close
The animals don’t fear humans. This sea lion robed towards us to find his ideal spot for a quick nap.

Landscape - lots of lava
As I mentioned the Galapagos Islands were created by volcanic eruptions. Due to the various ages of the islands you see everything from very broken down lava to nearly fresh lava like the one in the picture

Photogenic death
A dead water or land iguana

Long neck – Galapagos land tortoise
The different subspecies adapted, like many of the species in Galapagos, to the local environment. There are some which graze the ground and some (like the one in the picture) which feed of leaves. If they want they stand up and stretch their neck to reach leaves in a height of 1.5 meters.

Baby sea lion
Aren’t they just cute? They are also very curious and like to checkout tourists. Unfortunately you are not allowed to cuddle them.

This happens if you loose at card games
As we were a bit bored in the evenings we resorted to alcohol and card games. When you lost a game you had to do a dare. Katie lost one of the last games when we were slightly tipsy and we decided that she has to wear a snorkel mask and go up to one of the keeper in the tortoise breeding centre and ask where she can swim with the land tortoises.
The only answer she got was that land tortoises don’t swim

Marine iguanas
The only kind of iguanas in the world that swim. They feed of the algae’s growing in the sea around them.
Watching them swim shows you where they copied the Godzilla swim scenes from.

Our ship the Nemo II
It lost the mast in a storm in November. Luckily we had perfect weather all the time.

My cabin
I had it all to myself. Normally you pay USD2800 for that pleasure

Ninja turtles
These are real land tortoise shells.

Plazas Island - spotting the land iguanas
Most of the shots of land iguanas are from there. They live of the flowers and fruits of the cactus that you see in the picture

Diving at Gordon rock
Didn’t se the promised hammerhead sharks but saw sea turtles, sea lions, white tipped reef shark and a manta ray. Not bad for one dive.

Chinese hat Island
Got its name from the shape of the volcano cone which looks like (surprise) a Chinese hat

Post office bay
Postcards left in the barrel will be picked up by other tourists who live close to the recipients and should be delivered by hand. The tradition was started by whalers which wanted to send letters home.

Sally lightfoot crab
Very red

Comments

[Dagmar]

Green with envy
Man, I would love to be there. I can't wait to get a slide and video show. Cheers Dagmar