5. Galapagos - Unforgettable

covering 2 - 16 March 2019

Islas Fernandina

and to show that the islands are varied here are a few landscape shots of other islands

Rabida Island

Rabida Island with our boat The Aida Maria in the background

at James Bay, Santiago Island 

the beach at James Bay

Tortuga Bay, Santa Cruz Island

We aren’t snorkelling people but we certainly got more confident with it.  It was suggested to begin with 
that wearing a life jacket at the same time would be good for buoyancy and we tried it but it was very cumbersome so that didn’t last.  I also didn’t realise that the zip on a wetsuit is worn at the back so after struggling to get one on I had to do it all over again but the right way round.  Many of you will know that I’m very short-sighted and while I have prescription lensed goggles for swimming these wouldn’t fit under my snorkelling mask.  So I saw a lot of blurred underwater stuff until after a few days I tried putting the goggles outside the mask and finding to my surprise that it worked.  So the best views I have for most of the snorkelling are the photos I took of moving coloured objects.  I did take a photo of a lovely looking brownish gold fish and then realised it was a dead leaf on the bottom.  Heather thought there were lots of varieties of fish and I didn’t but that could just be the defective eyesight.  We did have some spectacular underwater sights swimming with turtles, flightless cormorants, sharks, rays and even Galapagos Penguins.  I got a penguin photo as it went past me like an express train – poor quality but definitely a penguin !  These are also an endemic, the Galapagos Penguin is the northernmost naturally occurring Penguin in the world and because a few drift just north of the equator, the only species found in the northern hemisphere.

not much of a photo but the best ( and only)one I have of
a Galapagos Penguin swimming past at speed

 I'm afraid I have no idea what any of these fish are called
- although one of them might be Gerald.

However if anyone reading this does know, please tell me.
 

a Flightless Cormorant from above the surface

and the same bird from below the surface

I think the famous Giant Tortoises are now only found here and in the Seychelles and we’ve been privileged to see them in both locations.   The Galapagos used to have fifteen different species spread across the islands and despite the depredations of sailors who took them in their tens of thousands for food, amazingly eleven species still survive.  Tipped on their backs, these tortoises will survive for months without food or water.  The last known species to become extinct was when a single male, called Lonesome George died in 2012.   He, just like Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi is now stuffed and on display in a museum.

 

There is a very impressive captive breeding programme for Giant Tortoises for all the existing species.  We saw tiny little tortoises two or three inches long up to the big breeding adults, the ones that look like mobile coffee tables.   We found out that incubation of their eggs takes 120 days and whether males or females emerge is dependent on the temperature the eggs have been incubated

at.  For anyone who is interested it’s 28C for males and 29.5C for females.  A captive breeding programme, laudable though it is still looks like a zoo.  A more pleasant attraction for me was visiting a farm in the interior of Santa Cruz island where Giant Tortoises wander freely about the farmland.  As you can imagine they wander slowly and it seemed even more bizarre because the farmland looked like a regular temperate latitude farm.  Then you look round and there are three or four Giant Tortoises in view.

The last island we visited was for an early morning walk and we did have some great views of two different species of birds in courtship displays.  Frigate birds are large angular pre-historic looking birds with a hooked tip to their beaks and they glide about effortlessly on the wind.  The males display by inflating a great balloon like bright red bladder under their beaks.  This is attractive to lady frigate birds and it seems that with them ‘bigger is better’.  

male Frigate Bird showing off

lady Frigate Bird looking down her beak

male Booby with a nice bit of stick

The Blue-footed Boobies are like our Gannets and to us are more comical than the Frigate Birds.  With the Boobies, a prospective pair will face each other and one (presumably the male) will pick up a stick and show it to the other bird.  A blue foot will be slowly lifted and placed back on the floor.  Then the other bird will lift a foot.  A charming little piece of nature’s choreography.   At some point the Booby brain decides “that’s the one for me”.

pair of Blue-footed Boobies in courting display

Starting off for the long journey home we used taxi, ferry and bus just to get to the airport and while in the taxi we encountered a Giant Tortoise crossing the road.  Yes, to get to the other side.  This one was a ‘petite’ being only about the size of a dustbin lid, but thicker. 

We visited nine different islands on our trip, some with relatively recent lava flows and fairly sparse vegetation to some with a good green cover and a good number of trees.   Some islands with lovely beaches and some with apparently no beaches at all.  Some islands pretty flat and others pretty hilly.  Indeed the highest point of the Galapagos is over 5,000 feet above sea level.  The islands were very varied but not the tropical islands of imagination as I said earlier.  The trip we chose was a good one and although intense we could have dipped out of any activity if we’d wanted to.  We just decided to get as much out of it as we could.  We saw pretty well everything we hoped for and some things we didn’t expect to such as photographing penguins and cormorants under water.  I was particularly taken with the shoals of Rays we saw from above and under the water.

Golden Rays next to the pier in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz (small shark on the right)

Our flights to and from The Galapagos from the Ecuadorian mainland were with an airline called TAME, perhaps an acronym but with slogans in their literature like TAME Routes and TAME News.  It could hardly have been more ironic that we had visited probably the wildest and most unspoilt place on earth.  The creatures are really all wild, just unafraid. 

On our return to dry land Heather recovered by sleeping for twelve hours.  However, this was a voyage that was definitely not to be missed.  Our visit to The Galapagos really was one of life’s great experiences. 

almost at the end of a highly successful and enjoyable journey