1. Galapagos - notes from a balcony

The sea before me is coloured a pale deepening to deep azure blue banded with black volcanic rocks at intervals under the surface.  Above, the sky is an almost completly unblemished blue.  On the horizon the sea is dark, a thin strip of almost battleship grey but the sky is a very pale blue.  That sky blue gets imperceptibly deeper as I tip my head back.  There’s not a cloud to be seen.   From an outstretched arm, two hand widths from the horizon up is the barely visible palest and tiniest sliver of moon, at these latitudes with two points down and a domed top.

We’re in our last week of this extended trip and are spending it in Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz in the Islas Galapagos.  Ecuadorian by name and politics but nothing like Ecuador.   My personal booking agent has nabbed what must be the best room in town.  East facing, which being just in the southern hemisphere means that for most of the day the sun is behind us and we don’t get baked.  Windows on two sides and a balcony where I’ve written this piece without moving from my chair, looking straight out over the sea. 

In front is the open ocean and the next piece of land directly in front of us is the Antarctic.  There’s a gentle swell and the soothing sounds of the waves breaking over a black rocky shore just thirty or so yards away.  The black rocks are dotted with bright orange-red Sally lightfoot crabs standing out as bright patches of colour in what seems to be an act of distinctive but suicidal bravado towards any predators.   There are plenty around.  Just to our left, Brown Pelicans and Blue-footed Boobies dive at what seems like dangerously high velocity into the water, looking for an early fish supper.   Angular, prehistoric looking Frigate birds drift across, apparently aimlessly but with a very keen eye for a victim.  Their victims are other birds which have caught some food and which the Frigates mob until the catch is regurgitated in terror.  Not my idea of a good lunch but it clearly suits the Frigate birds.

Further to our left the island rises gently, another sea but this time of land vegetation with a few roofs of low rise buildings glinting in the sun.  I can make out palm trees but the rest is an undulating multiple shaded green blanket.  Turning my head further I can see the green slopes of a classic volcanic cone, pleasingly currently very inactive 

Slightly to the right, two coconut palms split the view into three.   In that direction is the mooring area for an awful lot of money disguised as boats.  From here they look as if the majority are Galapagos Cruise ships bobbing at anchor, carrying between a dozen and perhaps as many as a hundred passengers.  There are some private boats too, a few large catamarans and fewer but wonderfully elegant single hulled sailing boats.  Yellow water taxis ferry people back and forth but with the breeze and the gentle susurration of the waves, no intrusive engine noise reaches us.

It sounds as if some of this is being made up for dramatic effect but it is really happening.  A turtle has just lazily paddled its way across from right to left and further out a Marine Iguana has swum left to right.   Turtles come up for air now and again but the Iguanas swim with their heads held clear of the water.  Just now, glancing down and to my left I see the familiar and usually disturbing outline of a shark in shallow water.  From here it looks to be eight or ten feet long, black in the blue.  It turns slightly away from the shore heads a fraction deeper and is gone.

Perhaps I’ll have a beer.