2. Galapagos - Iconic

April 02, 2019

covering 2 - 16 March 2019

"don't you step on mah blue suede shoes"

Blue-footed Booby

Sally Lightfoot Crab
and boots

This has to be the most iconic wildlife destination in the world and we’re here to see a good selection of the delights on offer. The Galapagos really do have some unusual creatures, from Giant Tortoises and seaweed eating Marine Iguanas to birds with slight adaptations for exploiting different food sources, the Darwin Finches. I’ve also never seen so many turtles. These are the islands which Charles Darwin visited for only five weeks in 1835 but which still gave him enough observations and data to help him formulate his Theory of Evolution. These are volcanic islands moving apart slowly as the tectonic plate seabed moves. Some of the volcanoes are still active. There was a significant eruption on one island in the last few years and of course where a lava flow reaches the sea, the island gets bigger as the molten rock hits the water and turns solid again. The islands are much bigger and further apart than I had thought. The largest island, Isabela is 4,588 square kilometres and roughly a hundred miles long. There are thirteen major islands in the archipelago and scores of small to tiny other ones. Only five are inhabited by humans.

Sierra Negre caldera - second largest in the world after Ngorogoro in Tanzania

Yellow Warbler

Here, instead of the many Avenidas Bernardo O’Higgins or Simon Bolivar as we’ve seen everywhere else, we see Avenidas Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin Centre, statues of Charles Darwin. Well, you doubtless get the theme here although locally his name is pronounced as two syllables - Shar-les.

These are isolated islands and travel between them is by boat apart from a few flights between two of the islands. So we’ll be sailing around for eight days, motoring really because no sails were involved. Choosing a tour, bearing in mind the islands to visit (there are creatures and birds specific to some islands and not others), the length of the trip and the size of boat is a daunting exercise. We opted for a tour visiting a wide variety of islands with shore based and snorkelling excursions on

the Aida Maria in very late afternoon light

the Aida Maria, a 68 foot long vessel carrying sixteen passengers and five crew. All shore visits have to be with an accredited guide and there are usually paths which we have to stick to in order to avoid disturbing the wildlife. Our very good guide was called Reuben, born and brought up on the islands who told us just enough but had more information if we asked. This wasn’t a specialised wildlife trip so everyone else would have been bored stiff if he’d done the ‘Total Wildlife’ talk. Our fellow travellers included four Canadians, two Chinese Californians, a woman from Taiwan, a Romanian surgeon, his medical consultant wife and two daughters living in Virginia, USA and two young women travelling together, one Italian, one Chinese working in Germany for a company whose official language was English.
One of the Romanian daughters who was eighteen spoke English, French, Romanian and Spanish fluently and was learning Mandarin ! The Taiwanese woman Wendy had to buy a whole new set of clothes because her bags had been misplaced by the airline and didn’t arrive at the airport in the Galapagos until we were underway in the boat, so she went the whole trip without anything she’d packed. Almost everything she wore had ‘Galapagos’ written on it somewhere.

Isla Isabela lava field - it looks like freshly turned soil but is very solid rock

and an Isla Isabela beach

Galapagos Dove

We sat at anchor off the island of San Cristobal awaiting the late arrivals and saw the only real rain (other than a bit of drizzle) we’d seen for five months. It was a sudden fifteen minute downpour coinciding almost exactly with the Romanian family’s trip from shore to boat in an open dinghy. This was to be our first of a number of overnight trips so that we maximised opportunities for daytime excursions. It was unfortunate that our cabin/broom cupboard with en-suite was below main deck towards the front and just behind the anchor chain locker. On several occasions at some unearthly hour we were serenaded by what was definitely not a gentle soothing melodic sound as the anchor chain rattled itself out.
That said, we slept well and were not
troubled by sea-sickness.

an early morning ride in a Zodiac

Red-billed Tropic Bird

No Pelicans were harmed

in the shooting of this sequence

Santa Fe land iguana

What we probably saw more of than anything else in the whole of the Galapagos were sealions. On the beach, in a tide pool swimming on their backs blowing bubbles, on the pavement, in the roads, under a stall selling fish, under a bench, on a bench. Everywhere. Our guide told us that he was once briefing the passengers on a trip, realised they were laughing and there was a sealion behind him. It had got on to the back of the boat, climbed three steps and come in through the main cabin door. They are very inquisitive. Signs tell us to keep two metres from the sealions but they don’t pay any attention to that at all. Well, what’s the difference between a seal and a sealion I hear you ask ? Well, Sealions have visible earflaps, seals do not. Sealions ‘walk’ more easily than seals. Other than that you’ll have to ask a sealion, or a seal.