Galapagos day 9 – Cruise day 4 – Santa Cruz Island

As I expected when spending time on the island where we already spent a few nights, this was the least interesting of the cruise days so far. Again, it seemed to be a day off for the majority of the staff, while we were kept away from the boat until evening.

The morning started off nice, with a two-time viewing of a group of 13-14 golden rays off the side of the ship, even though we were anchored in harbor.

What I liked least was all the breaks throughout the day. It seemed to me we were just passing time, 20 minutes for ice cream in the morning, over two hours for lunch, another 20 minutes for a drink in the afternoon. While we have such breaks on the boat and I appreciate the chance to spend a little time in the room, to read or to write to just to relax, on land I had nothing to do and felt bored.

We started out at the Charles Darwin research center, a hot, humid walk across town. And other than seeing the cute baby turtles they breed in captivity, it wasn’t a very interesting exhibition.

One story I enjoyed was that of Lonesome George, the Center’s conservation icon since the 1970s. He is a 90 kilogram giant tortoise who was found on Pinta Island in 1971. A man named Peter Pecker had read has a child that the giant tortoise species on Pinta was extinct. So he was very excited to hear about this discovery.

Scientists tried everything possible to get him to reproduce, including bringing in an Italian specialist to manipulate him by hand. But nothing worked. Juan told us that tortoises probably learn sexual behavior from others or by hormones trigged by watching others. George, left alone as a baby, missed out on that. As a result, he seems unable to develop a sexual interest or to perform, despite being exposed to younger males being sexually active. His plight shows the importance of turtles having behavioral models to learn from in the wild.

Charles Darwin was impressed by both the number and size of giant tortoises when he visited the Galapagos. He wrote about how Spaniards found fresh water by following the tracks that went from the seacoast to wells.

“I could not imagine what animal traveled so methodically along the well-chosen tracks,” he wrote. “Near the springs it was a curious spectacle to behold many of these great monsters; one set eagerly traveling onwards with outstretched necks, and another set returning, after having drunk their fill.”

He compared the tortoise bladder to a frogs, which acts as a reservoir for the moisture it needs to exist. After visiting the springs, the urinary bladder became distended with fluid, gradually decreased in volume and became less pure. The inhabitants, when overcome with thirst, would kill a tortoise. If the bladder was full, it would drink its contents.

“In one I saw killed,” Darwin wrote, “the fluid was quite limpid, and had only a very slightly bitter taste.”

They ate the meat, both fresh and salted, and made a “beautifully clear” oil from the fat.

From there, we went to lunch at Juan’s aunt’s house, a hacienda in the green highlands of Santa Cruz. They have a pavilion where they served grilled chicken to tourists, and a pool where we were able to take a dip. I tried cold lemongrass tea there, which tasted like a refreshing mixture of tea and lemonade.

After lunch we took some walks through the highlands. We walked through an escalacia forest, trees that are tally and bushy on time. The Cuban/Spanish cedars had the unique feature of emitting a scent of garlic, making it seem as though something good was cooking in the forest, like we’d soon approach a fresh pot of stew. The two crater holes were impressive. It was like a sinkhole, with the trees and grows growing within as usual, just far down, as though the land had fallen.

Juan took us to a lava tube. It was formed during a lava flow. When it moved like a basaltic river, the part that had contact with the air solidified and the area below kept flowing. There are several such tubes on the island, but some have been modified for tourists, with smoothed over paths and installed lights. This was a natural one. We scampered over damp rocks to get inside the tall arched tunnel, looking at dense greenery growing at either end.

Finally, we walked through the farm of Steven Divine, the owner of Moonrise Travel. His parents sailed here from Washington State in the 1950s and started a farm. He now owns a sizeable tract of land where giant tortoises saunter through, as well as run a successful tour agency. In crossing over his land, we found a giant turtle. The large male was more shy than those we’d seen in captivity at the research center.

For me, the most interesting part of the day had nothing to do with wildlife viewing, but the local political situation. As we returned to town, where we had a little free time before returning to the board, I saw some protestors. I asked Juan what was going on and he explained that he was planning to join the protest.

According to Juan, the Ecuadorian air force, based on the island of Baltra (where the airport is) has been engaged in illegal activities, such as leading kayak trips to places where kayaking shouldn’t occur (and they shouldn’t be involved in tourism activities) and selling gas to boat operators, undercutting local gas suppliers.

Several members of the national park captured some of these illegal activities on video and they planned to report these violations. The air force wanted to get the video from them, so they beat up a national park leader (I think the director), so badly he almost died. Shortly afterwards, the national park representatives went to confront the air force about selling gas to tourist boats. Again, there was a confrontation and the national park representative, a woman, was beaten enough to be hospitalized.

The protest was organized to protest the use of excessive violence by the Ecuadorian air force and they assembled quite a large crowd. While at an internet café near the center of town, we heard the 4x4 come down the street with a loudspeaker. I went outside to take a picture. Policemen in their brown pants and khaki tops walked on either side. Behind the pickup truck came two young woman, carrying a sign that read “Say No to Violence.”

Suddenly, a bedraggled looking man standing in between the pickup and the women holding the banner started to spin wildly and sparks began to fly. Something was exploding and it was just directly across the street from where I was standing. I bent down and ran into the internet café, ducking under the window frame for cover. I was sure shots were ringing out or a bomb or grenade was going to go off. “So this is what it’s like to be the victim of a bomb attack” I thought as I instinctively sought cover and fearfully awaited to see if the building I was in would explode. Another tourist in my group hit the floor.

When I next peeked out, the street was smoky and the women holding the banner looked dazed, but the protestors continued on ahead. I went out and took a few photos.

“I should warn you, this could be violent,” said an Englishwoman who seemed to live in the area. “They are protesting the military.”

I couldn’t believe that the police didn’t react to the explosives and that the man just seemed to disappear. The Englishwoman explained that whenever a meeting is going to be held, the tradition is to set off fireworks to announce that people come down to attend it. So this guy wasn’t trying to blow up the protestors, as I feared, but was announcing the presence of a demonstration. One of our shipmates got a picture on his digital camera. And from that, we can see that the idiot was smoking while holding a handful of firecrackers and a coke bottle. And so they must have accidentally all gone off.

Most of the internet café customers cleared out and I, shaken by the experience, was ready to go too. But once the protest passed by, we decided to stay. The last time I was in Ecuador, in early 2001, my mom and I found ourselves in the midst of a protest by indigenous groups. This caused us to have to raft down a river on inner tubes in order to get out of our jungle lodge and we were even held by the protestors for several hours. It seems to be quite easy to get caught up in civil unrest here, despite the large tourist presence.

By the time we went to the docks for our dinghy ride back to the boat, the protestors were gathered in the central park and a man was making an impassioned speech about the civilians inability to live in an environment where rules are not followed and order is not maintained. Our guide, Juan, skipped dinner in order to participate in the protests himself He is an intelligent, passionate, and caring person, with dreams of creating a school on a boat for local poor children who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to see the islands. And he cares about the park rules being followed by everyone, even the military.

Galapagos day 8 – Cruise day 3 – Floreana Island

Today was a comparatively slow day. After an eventful morning, we’ve pretty much had the rest of the day off. The focus today is more on the staff – who work 9 weeks in a row before receiving three weeks off. Today they were allowed to play soccer on a field on Floreana island and we spent the afternoon cruising back to our starting point in Puerto Ayora so that they could spend the evening and night with their families.

So I’ll insert some general information about the Galapagos here. The Galapagos islands attracted 146,000 tourists last year. It’s the most diverse marine ecosystem in the Pacific and is full of endemic species, meaning that the species are found only there. Half of the birds and most of the reptiles are endemic. It’s also unique in that there are few predators, meaning that the animals lack the fear they posses in other environments, where they have to worry more about their survival. This makes for easy wildlife watching by visitors.

Remarking on the tameness of the birds, Charles Darwin wrote: “There is not one which will not approach sufficiently near to be killed with a switch, and sometimes, as I have myself tried, with a cap or hat. A gun is here almost superfluous; for with the muzzle of one I pushed a hawk off the branch of a tree.”

He told the story of a boy on Floreana sitting by a well with a switch in his hand, which he used to kill doves and finches as they came to drink. He already had a small heap for dinner and said he was in the habit of constantly waiting there for the same purpose.

“We must conclude,” wrote Darwin, “that the birds, not having yet learnt that man is a more dangerous animal than the tortoise…disregard us, in the same manner as magpies in England do the cows and horses grazing in the fields…I have not not met with any account of the land birds being so tame, in any other quarter of the world, as at the Galapagos and Falkland Islands.”

The islands themselves were first hidden on the sea floor. As lava flows accumulated steadily, they eventually rose above the surface as volcanic cones. What used to be ocean became new islands, empty of life and ready to receive organisms. For Darwin, as well as subsequent naturalist-oriented visitors, it offered the opportunity to look at a new land and watch the development of naturalist history.

At 7 in the morning we took off in our dinghies for Punta Cormorant, Floreana, where we landed on a beautiful half-moon beach. The soil had a slightly greenish tint from the volcanic olivine. Unlike yesterday, where we were among hordes of tourists, only one other boat was at this island with us. And after they left, we were alone. While we saw less animals today, the feeling of being alone in this remote nature made up for it.

We followed a trail to a lagoon, where flamingoes waded in the water. About 50 flamingoes spread out across the large body of water. The adults were dark pink on the head and rear, light in the middle. The juveniles were a uniform light pink. They stirred up the mud with their legs, forcing crustaceans to come up to feed on. Each flamingo could eat over four pounds a day of aquatic insects. Elegant black neck stilts walked along the edge of the shore, looking for small crabs.

Although the wildlife was more limited than on Espanola, the island felt remote, quiet and peaceful. Only one other boat had been there that morning besides us. In the light breeze, and the melodic chirping of the warblers, I could see and feel the quiet tug of earth’s history.

A short distance away, we arrived at a remote and beautiful beach, where turtles lay their eggs. It’s now the season for laying eggs and turtle tracks, moving from the ocean to the high sand, covered the shore. At the top of the sand were several holes, where the turtles laid 80-120 eggs each. Less than one percent of them will make it to adulthood. At one end of the beach, a single fresh track stood out from the rest of the water-smoothed sand. Juan said it probably was made last night. It’s unfortunate that the park doesn’t allow nighttime visits because it would have been spectacular to stay up and watch the turtle come in.

The Green Pacific Sea Turtle is the only one that nests in the Galapagos. Of the 80-120 eggs laid by a female, less than one percent of them make it. The baby turtles come out of the sand holes at night, at the same time their mother left them three months earlier. Then they leave for 20 years, until they return to breed. During those 20 years, the turtles are lost and very little information exists on what happens during those first two decades of life.

We circled around to the other side of the lagoon, looking at birds and plant life along the way. I especially liked the pearlberry, a plant that produces berries looking like shiny, oval pearls.

As we left on our dinghy back to the boat, we passed a lone Galapagos penguin, fishing in the water. This type is the second smallest penguin in the world.

A little while later we went out to snorkel at a nearby spot, Devil’s Ground. While the water was a bit murkier than Juan said it was last week, we were still able to see several white-tipped reef sharks, a brightly colored azure parrotfish, lots of little angelfish and creole fish (which appeared grey, but are really red). Best of all were two Green Pacific Sea Turtles we found swimming underwater, looking prehistoric as they glided under the waves with their fins and massive round bodies.

In the afternoon we had a very short stop at a place called the post office. It’s been made into a tourist destination when I think it’s really an excuse to be at a place where the crew can play soccer. It’s an old wooden barrel where passengers put addressed postcards. Visitors rifle through them and if they find one from their country they take it and mail it free of charge.

The path continued on for 16 kilometers Puerto Velasco Ibarra but unfortunately we weren’t given time to follow it. I’d be very interested in visiting that community of 80, especially after reading the story of its founding.

We had several hours on the boat to spend reading or relaxing. While cruising to the island of Santa Cruz, with the blue waters of the ocean all around us, our guide spotted bottle-nosed dolphins jumping out of the water ahead. He called us all onto the deck and we watched as they swam toward our boat and rode in the wave caused by our bow. Standing on deck, we watched up to eight dolphins at a time swimming underneath and alongside our prow. Some of them were huge – grey and sleek and elegant. Occasionally, they’d come up for air and I could see the large, round blowhole, their version of a nostril, on top of their heads. That was a pretty magical and surreal moment. Juan said that they see dolphins on about one of every two trips across that stretch of water. I’m glad we lucked out.

Galapagos days 4 and 5 – Sierra Negra Volcano and Puerto Ayora

We’re back on Puerto Ayora, having returned on the daily 16-passenger fiberglass boat from Isabela. We stopped at the Western oriented café near the dock for a welcome breakfast of whole-grain pancakes with tropical fruit and tea with milk.

Puerto Ayora, the closest thing the Galapagos has to a capital, seems like a center of civilization. It was a treat for us to return to our simple, but air-conditioned room, internet access, laundry service, much as we loved the beauty and isolation of Isabela.

Yesterday was a rough day for us. We’d both become completely fried by the equatorial sun during our 15-kilometer hike on Tuesday. So yesterday we were in pain with the back of our knees scalded bright red by the sun. It would have been nice to rest, but we couldn’t give up the opportunity to see the Sierra Negra volcano, which we’d heard we could ascend by horseback, so we went ahead and joined a tour.

I was surprised when a truck picked us up and the guide who was driving told us to get into the open air back, where two benches lined the flatbed. In our condition, we couldn’t sit out in the open sun for an hour each way, so we asked to cram into the front seat with the driver.

There are only three towns on Isabela, the main beach town of Puerto Villamil (pop. 2200), a farming community of 500 called San Tomas, and a tiny town that I never saw on any maps called Las Mercedtitas. The island is a vast plot of empty land – a fact we were able to appreciate when we climbed up to the observation tower yesterday and saw only ocean, volcanoes, mangroves, lava fields, and scrubby forests extending as far as the eye could see. On this trip, we were heading north to the area of San Tomas.

As we packed the cracked lava strewn earth, prickly cactuses rising from the hard rocky earth, I wondered how and what people farmed. After we’d gone a ways, trees covered with Spanish moss appeared, and then dense greenery, including the upside-down hanging angel trumpet flowers. Our guide explained that the winds blow from south to north. And for that reason, the soil is blown to the north, so that the southern parts remain dry and barren and the areas available for farming (pineapple, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, bananas) are in the north.

I somehow expected there wouldn’t be many people at this remote spot on an isolated island. But I was wrong. We pulled up with a bunch of other trucks filled tourists filling the backs. We gaggled together at the base of a hill, like a flock of chickens, and waited as we were assigned our horses.

The trip was pretty disappointing, as the guides herded us up to the crater, whipping our horses to speed us up. They wanted us to finish up and get on to their next, afternoon, tour. It didn’t matter if some of the horses (including mine) bucked in response to the whipping. They also cut out our planned hike to the Cerro Azul volcano.


But despite the poor guiding, the landscape was beautiful. We rode up green hills to arrive at a vast, black crater – the crater of the volcano Sierra Negra. It’s the second largest crater in the world, after Ngorogoro in Tanzania. I’m lucky to have seen both and what a difference. While Ngorogoro is crawling with giraffes, rhinos and flamingos, the Sierra Negra is pure black basalt, with visible fissues.

The last explosion, at the rim of the crater, happened on October 22nd, 2005. they guides saw small explosions, then bombs. Many of them came up to the crater to watch the pyrotechnics during the 15 day explosion.”

I asked the horse owner, Juan, a cowboy in a red, white, and blue bandanna, weathered skin and gold teeth, whether he was scared. “A little,” he said, “But we have a stronger curiosity. When it erupts we all come up and look.”

He said the eruption brought tourists night and day. “We pray to God for more eruptions so that we’ll have a lot of work,” he said.

On our way back to town, we stopped by the Tortoise Center to learn about the efforts the center is realizing to reproduce and repopulate Isabela Island with tortoises. On the island, each volcano has a different race of giant tortoise. Of the 12 species worldwide, five of them live on Isabela. But with time, they have become more and more rare.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, pirates killed thousands of tortoises for food. After Isabela was colonized in the late 1800s, the first inhabitants also ate tortoise meat and exported their oil to the mainland. As well, they introduced animals, such as pigs, cats, rats, burros and goats, that changed the natural environment. The population steadily decreased. The newborns, with their soft shell vulnerable to attack by cats and rats, had a hard time surviving. So the center opened, to keep newborns in pens, weigh and measure them every three months, and then put them out in the wild when they are able to resist attack.

That evening, the island held the Miss Isabela pageant, the first stage in the journey to become Miss Galapagos, then Miss Ecuador, then Miss Universe. As elsewhere in Latin America, being a beauty queen is a big deal.

There were only four contestants on this small island. But an entire parade was organized in their honor. A young woman who lived in a house next to our hotel was a participant (and the eventual winner). I watched her and her family decorate the back of a pick up truck with stuffed sea lions. Then she put on a banner and took her place.

Residents lined the street as the police led the parade. The four pick-ups came by, each carrying a contestant (they seemed to be 16 or 17 years old). After those initial glances, the entire town seemed to gather in the town hall for the pageant. This was a full-fledge production that took hours to set up, complete with vendors of cold bottled beer and roasted chicken and beef.


We watched the candidates parade out in a variety of skimpy clothing. We watched a young girl dressed in pink, perhaps ten years old, perform sexy dancers with a great confidence in her ability. And we watched the national costume show, in which each contestant came out in a costume she designed that represents Isabela Island. Each was more outlandish and outrageous than the next. Rosita, our neighbor and the eventual winner, came out last, carrying a fishing pole, and wearing a bikini while balancing a giant mackerel that curved from her hips to her head.

When it became clear the contest would last well into the night, we prepared to leave. When a balloon lit by fire was released in the wrong direction of wind, flew up to the center of the covered station, and began to burn, we hastened our exit. Getting trapped in a packed, burning stadium full of beauty pageant enthusiasts wasn’t something we wanted to experience. Luckily, we heard later, the fire went out before the stadium caught aflame. And the pageant went on.