Galapa-glorious

¡Hola!

Last night I returned from 8 days in the Galapagos Islands. What a marvelous place!

The plane lands in Baltra, a small island off Santa Cruz. A bus takes you from the airport to the boat dock, where you then take a short boat ride to northern part of Santa Cruz. Another bus takes you to Puerto Ayora on the southern part of the island.

Baltra is arid, with low, scraggly, silvery ground and a special type of small green tree. A special desert. The soil is rocky, deep red and black. This is all you see until you approach the port. And what a gorgeous sight! The water is several hues of turquoise blue. It looks surreal. As the bus approached the dock, I saw a pelican land and scoop up a fish. Immediately two other birds landed on the head and the back of the pelican! Even with the boat traffic, the water is clear. You can see fish swimming around dock.

The landscape from the northern part to the southern part of the island is similar to that of Baltra, however, there are mountains in the distance off to one side.

After a 20 minute ride, I arrived in Puerto Ayora, which the town where most people live, and is the center of tourism for Santa Cruz. For a tourist town, it is very clean, and extremely safe. And also very expensive, for both locals and tourists. Quito is inexpensive. The Galapagos Islands are not.

There are two types of touring you can do in the Galapagos: Ship/yacht-based, and land based. A ship-based tour is more expensive, ranging from $4000 for 8 nights on a luxury liner, to $1000 for 8 nights on a small boat. You sleep on a ship and visit the islands from the ship. You also get to visit more islands than if you do it the land based way. The land-based tour means that you return to a hotel at the end of the day to sleep. Land-based tours are less expensive. My host organization in Quito arranged a 5 day land-based tour for me based in Santa Cruz, and then arranged a three day homestay on the island of Isabela.

While in Santa Cruz, I visited the Charles Darwin Research Center which is devoted to preserving the iguanas and giant tortoises of the galapagos. That the government takes great steps to preserve the wildlife of the Galapagos is magnificent. The tortoises would be extinct if the government took no such steps. Tortoises in the wild have a 1% chance of survival due to predators introduced over the years. Wild dogs, pigs, goats, as well as rats and ants all destroy the tortoises in the wild. The center has a tortoise nursey where they collect tortoise eggs in the wild, and in the nursey, hatch and raise the tortoises until they are 3 or 5 years old, then place them in the wild. A five year old tortoise is about 8 inches in diameter. The really big tortoises weigh over 600lbs (300kg) and live to be over 150 lbs.

I don´t know what the danger to the lizards are. There seem to be alot of them in the wild, especially the marine lizards. There are two types of lizards: Marine Lizards and Land Lizards. Marine lizards are black, with bodies of about 12 to 14 inches long, and tails equally as long. They live near the sea, and you can see them sunning themselves on the rocks. Their long tails help them swim very long distances. One sailed out to our boat in the middle of the sea from who know where. Guess he was curious. He stopped a while to allow us to take photos.

Land lizards are dark yellow. I didn´t see any of these outside of the Charles Darwin Research Center.

One morning we took a walk through a forest where tortoise live. One tortoise met us in the road. She was big one, about 85 years old. She watched us for a while. However, as we passed, she became scared and retreated in her shell. We saw several tortoises bathing in a pond of bright green tortoise vomit (tortoises tend to spit up their food while in the water). And we saw two tortoises mating. The male tortoise climbs on top of the female, and will stay there for 4 to 8 hours. He makes a loud groaning sound as he mates. The females don´t like being mounted (Gee, I wonder why), and try to escape when a male approaches.

The guide said that every now and then a big tortoise will walk on to the road, then get scared by the cars and won´t move. It takes 8 strong men to lift the tortoise off the road and back into the woods.

We did a lot of snorkeling. Snorkeling in the Galapagos is easier as the waters are relatively calm. You didn´t need flipper to swim and stay afloat. One day we snorkeled off the beach. The fish were gorgeous, lots of different colors and sizes. Another day we swam with sea lions. A snorkel allowed you to see the sea lions swimming and playing around you. And we snorkeled over white-tipped sharks. The sharks ignored us -- thank goodness -- as we swam over them. The guide swore they were vegetarians.

And the beaches are magnificent. White, soft sand, warm blue clean water. We visited three beaches in Santa Cruz -- the one where we snorkeled, and then another, more secluded beached that required a 45 minute walk in the hot sun to get there. The walking keeps the number of visitors down. But boy is it worth the walk! The third beach is easier to access and so has more locals swimming in it. The water is as warm as bath water, and is very calm.

We also visited a natural pond that is located in what looks like a quarry. It is surround by rocks, and is 14 meters deep in the center. After the walk of death over slippery jagged rocks in the blazing sun to get there, the cool water is refreshing.

To get to Isla Isabela, you have to take a speed boat. The ride is 2.5 hours (8 hours in a regular boat). The ride is choppy. One thing I know for sure is that I don´t get sea sick. There were 18 people packed in the boat, with no room to move. And no place to rest my back as I sat near the back next to the motors. But the ride is peaceful. The sound of the motors and the rhythm of the boat was hypnotic.

Isabela is the largest of the islands, but it the newest island, and has only 2000 inhabitants. It´s also much hotter than Sant Cruz. Santa Cruz was hot, but Isabela awfully hot. It´s the hottest place I´ve ever visited. Even at night it´s hot. And the proximity of the equator makes it feel even hotter. The humidity wasn´t bad. The sun was strong. Even I got burned on my shoulders and back while wearing number 30 sunscreen.

On Isabela, I stayed at the house of a woman who usually houses volunteers who come to work at the tortoise nursery on Isabela. Gladys is her name. Gladys and her husband have three bedrooms that they rent to people associated with the organization I am working with. I got to know Gladys, her aunt and uncle, and her adorable, precocious 2 year old neice.

Her uncle owns horses, and is a tour guide. He was my tour guide while I was there. His specialty is a tour of the Sierra Negra Volcano on horseback. The day I went, I was accompanied by a swedish honeymoon couple. The horses are small and scrawny, and we were three big people. Part of the road up the mountain was muddy and slippery, and so the horses had a hard time walking. They almost fell several times. On the way down, we dismounted and walked for a while until we passed the dangerous part. As we rode, I thought of the spanards who traveled the Central and South America on horseback. And they work heavy, hot clothing. My padillas hurt after only 3 hours of riding. I can imagine riding for days. But maybe your padillas get used to the saddle after a couple of days. Actually, my padillas are still sore, two days later!

Horses aside, the scenery up the mountain was beautiful. And the volcanic crater was amazing. It is about 6 miles in diameter and is the second largest volcanic crater in the world. And it was filled with lava. The lava looked like black and gray mud. And we also had a view of Isabela from where we were. It was green and looked similar to Central New York farmland. It was also much cooler up in the mountains.

In addition to the volcano, I visited the Wall of Tears. It was used to torture prisoners from 1945 to 1959, although I´m not exactly how. It´s a high wall of lava rocks located far off the road in the middle of no where. Isabela also has a tortoise nursery which seems more organized than the one on Santa Cruz. I also did some snorkeling in a laguna, and spent the afternoon at the beach relaxing.

All in all I had a wonderful time in the Galapagos. I´d love to visit again.

Cheers,
Stacey