3. Galapagos - Unmissable

covering 2 - 16 March 2019

trip at first light to Isla Isabela with photos taken before we even got ashore

Marine Iguanas catching the early morning sun 

Galapagos Penguin

Galapagos Flightless Cormorant

Hawksbill Turtle leg

For those of you who don’t know, the Galapagos Islands straddle the equator about six hundred miles west of the Ecuadorian mainland at 90 degrees west so they’re exactly one quarter of the way around the world from London.   You might picture us at the equator swimming and snorkelling in wonderfully warm tropical seas around the islands.  Now some months back I wrote about the cold Humboldt Current along the South American Pacific coast and in Pacific Ocean terms six hundred miles is well, a drop in the ocean.  So the water here is cold, bearable in places but when exposed to the ocean currents it is wetsuit temperature water.  The first time I got in with a wetsuit, it was still so cold I nearly got straight back out again.  The water also wasn’t particularly clear and there aren’t lots of lovely tropical corals to see.  However we did have some tremendous underwater sightings and the snorkelling was well worthwhile.  What we did discover on the couple of occasions we could swim without the wetsuits was that they do help to prevent sunburnt legs and back.

Spotted Eagle Ray

Hawksbill Turtle

   

Marine Iguana at full paddle

Marine Iguana and non-endemic mammal for scale

The Marine Iguanas here in The Galapagos are unique and endemic.  Nowhere else in the world are there iguanas which swim in the sea and eat algae.  They don’t have webbed feet but do have strong legs and a muscular tail making them good swimmers and they can sometimes be seen several hundred yards offshore.   They grow to about a metre long and being reptiles and therefore cold blooded can’t stay in the water too long because they would become too cold, torpid and 

probably drown.  They have to come ashore and warm up in the sunshine, pressing their bellies to the warm rock.   For anyone who is Iguanaphobic, a word I may have just invented, this would not be a good place.  Land Iguanas do seem to be all over the place but not in groups.  However, Marine Iguanas can be encountered in great heaps, lying on top of each other or walking across other Iguanas without any reaction from the one being walked on.  I think it’s interesting that the only ocean swimming iguanas developed where the water is cold rather than in a warm tropical sea.

they obviously don't object to crowds

and here's some colour - a Greater Flamingo

Swallow-tailed Gull

and a Swallow-tailed Gull chick being fed

and here's something quite bizarre,
a penguin swimming amongst mangrove. 
Penguins are usually found in antarctic conditions
while mangroves are found in the tropics

The Galapagos are also not the tropical islands of imagination covered in lush vegetation and palm trees with golden sandy beaches.  Some are but many are not.  Indeed, much of the sand is black ground down volcanic rock.  The first trip we did ashore from our boat was a dry landing from the Zodiacs (rubber dinghies with outboard motors) onto a wet, slippery jetty on an island called South Plaza.  The bit we were on was arid with a few ten to fifteen feet high cactus and scrubby undergrowth but it was mostly low and sparse vegetation with lots of black volcanic rocks to trip over.  The solidified lava is lethally rough and sharp and over the eight days of this visit to the islands I shredded the outer edges of the soles of my walking boots on it.   Despite this our guide regularly walked on it in bare feet.  Of the vegetation, Heather particularly liked Opuntias, the cactus like trees we saw in a number of locations.  This was our first opportunity to see how unafraid the wildlife is.  Having developed from time immemorial without man to be frightened of, they pay us no attention unless we get very close.   We stand as a group of sixteen within a few feet of nesting Swallow-tailed Gulls, who ignore us.  Three feet long land Iguanas ignore us.  Marine Iguanas ignore us.  The only Red-billed Tropic Bird we see on the entire five month trip ignores us.  A pattern is developing.  

lava flow on Islas Fernandina 

Another island is visited in the afternoon, one with it’s own species of land Iguana.  It ignores us.  This was a wet landing, which means getting out of the Zodiac into the water and wading ashore onto an idyllic sandy beach, golden sand for a change.  The only litter was fifty or more sealions who If they didn’t ignore us did no more than cast a lazy eye in our direction and then go back to sleep.

Galapagos Flycatcher

 

and this to give you an idea of just how elusive and difficult they are to photograph