Galapagos

Well we're finally in Colombia, where reportedly, you can buy a gram of cocaine for $2 (though foreigners get taken for $4). But in typical fashion, we're a little behind on the blog and we'll have to get to Cartagena and Medellin later.

Our last eight days in Ecuador were spent in the Galapagos Islands, which will assuredly be one of the highlights of our trip and has certainly left an indelible impression upon us. While we've undertaken other trips in which we 'saw' the wildlife, often it was through binoculars, (usually monkeys and birds or the occasional sloth), at other times, you might see a river dolphin snort or simply observe it's wake after it pokes its snout out of the water. And at other times, you can come up pretty close but they never move (anacondas, caymans, tarantulas).

In the Galapagos, on the other hand, the animals here appear with such common frequency that they're just part of the landscape, whether people are there or not.

Unlike most folks, we decided to do a land tour, so instead of living on a boat and traveling from island to island in the evening, we spent a total of eight days on four islands (San Cristobal, Floreana, Isabela, South Plaza and Santa Cruz) and slept on in hotels in three of them. In such a tour, you get to see pretty much the same wildlife as on a boat, but are able to eat and sleep on dry land. And as the travel agent suggested, we would be able to go out in the evenings on land, whereas in the boat, you're just stuck in a ship rocking in the open sea with whoever you're stuck with on your tour. The drawbacks were that we would see fewer islands thus less plant life, but that was ok with us.

The Galapagos are about 620 miles off the main coast of Ecuador in the Pacific. After landing in the first island of San Cristobal, it was explained to us that the islands are between three and five million years in age, which formed from volcanic magma spewing from under the ocean. Many of the animals there are endemic to the Galapagos and cannot be found anywhere else in the world. On the tour, we had a couple different guides who asked us the same riddle about the iguanas the age of the islands. Apparently, the marine iguanas, found only in the Galapagos, have been around for between 10 and 14 million years but the islands have been in existence for less than half that time. Apparently, the islands were formed in a geological hot spot and then the plate on which they are located are slowly moving eastward toward the mainland and when they get there, will get swallowed up under the mainland. Anyway, this process has been going on for some time now (the Galapagos move several cm per year) and what happened was, at one time, animals from the mainland like iguanas floated from the continent to islands that were closer to Ecuador, and before those islands got swallowed up, they moved to islands further west. Anyway, this process repeated itself over a few million years and the animals evolved over generations to the new environment of their islands. Aside from the fact that that many of the animals here are unique to the Galapagos, they also evolved without natural predators. As such, they did so without a natural sense of fear and are unperturbed at the presence of someone walking by.

Our adventures began on San Cristobal, one of the two islands with a commercial airport. Approximately 30,000 people reside in the Islands, mostly in Santa Cruz and Cristobal. The first animals we encountered were the sea lions, who gather in virtually every beach in the archipelago. As was obvious after about two minutes, the camera toting tourists are far shier about approaching the sea lions than vice versa. The sea lions, which were no more perturbed about our presence than they would be with a sea gull. You can go right up to them and they just continue rolling around in the sand, suckling (in the case of the newborns) or just sort of yelling at each other (female sea lions sound like humans vomiting). Back in town, the sea lions share the beaches with people, find shade under dry-docked boats and lounge in the sidewalks in town near the water.

Like fat rolls of jelly with flippers, a sun bathing sea lion looks like the laziest creature on the face of the earth. They often lie on their backs, belly up like a drunken bum in the Tenderloin. I believe we ended up seeing sea lions on every island we visited and after a while, you actually get tired of them, especially since they actually really stink. They also attract flies that like to feed off the salt water on their bodies, which then also like to buzz around your head when you sweat.

Our second day on Cristobal, we visited a tortoise breeding sanctuary, where the animals apparently lead a very good life. The Cristobal species of tortoise, like the other Galapagos tortoises, have thick legs like an elephant but sport relatively short necks, indicative of the wetter conditions, and thus more plentiful ground vegetation on the island. The tortoises on other islands, like on Santa Cruz are the saddleback type for with the Galapagos were named. They have a saddle shaped shell with a higher crest around the head, allowing the animal to elongate its neck to reach food situated in higher, drier conditions. With their long legs and neck, they look sort of like a shelled diplodicus. The largest of these animals reaches about 550 lbs and can be more than 150 years old. I thought it would make a cool group picture if we all hoisted one up but that sort of thing is frowned upon here.

As I mentioned before, many of the animals here don't worry when you're nearby. This proved to be the near downfall of the giant tortoises during the 1800s when whaling ships stopped by to fill their holds with giant tortoises. The tortoises didn't run away and could live for a full year without food or water, which made them ideal for sailors whose long journeys provided little i the way of fresh meat. Fortunately for the giant tortoises, the whales in the area were hunted out of existence and European whalers stopped visiting the islands.

In the afternoon, we snorkeled outside an area called Kicker Rock, where we were lucky enough to swim with sharks, rays and sea turtles. Most of the sharks were white and black tips (which don't attack people) of about 6 feet in length. We also saw a hammerhead or two. Incidentally, only about one visitor a year gets attacked here, usually by a bull shark. After Kicker Rock, we went to another spot to swim with sea lions. They are as fast in the water as they are slow on land. Near shore, they dart toward you like torpedoes and swerve away at the last second. It's actually sort of unsettling.

After San Cristobal, we went to Floreana, where they've got a lot of other tortoises. Here they have a tortoise sanctuary as well, but interestingly enough, they smash all they eggs they find. The Galapagos is considered to be a sort of living laboratory, where the adaptive development of each animal species is on display in its own unique form, reflecting the unique habitat of its island. And people want to keep it that way. Apparently, a long time ago, most of the Floreana tortoises were wiped out and animals from other islands were introduced. Not being that far apart genetically, the different species intermingled and bred, creating hybridized species. Apparently, these mixed breed turtles are not considered acceptable, and are being allowed to die out here, since I guess someone has decided it's better to keep the tortoise bloodlines from each island pure. Anyway, for such reasons, they smash the eggs at this sanctuary, though we weren't lucky enough to see any such destruction. We just watched the grown tortoises eat, who were likely unaware of the doom awaiting their offspring. I thought perhaps it would be interesting if they harvested the young tortoises for soup or something but I guess that would send the wrong message here, though it does seem a little wasteful to just smash the eggs (Personally, I would gladly pay extra for the novelty of eating a giant tortoise).

Between Floreana and Cristobal, we saw something pretty amazing. We came across a school of between 100 and 200 feeding dolphins. Our guide said they were common dolphins, which were actually not that common in the Galapagos. We chased them in our boat, as the school stretched out in the horizon, jumping in unison in groups of a dozen or so. Really something special to witness. We also saw a few groups of rays swimming near the surface of the water. They draft off each other like bicyclists.

Next, we went to Isabella, the largest of the Islands. This is the land of the marine iguana. While iguanas are all over the place in the Galapagos (like the sea lions, they also like to sunbathe on the sidewalks), the largest colony appears to be on Isabella. It is a strange animal. Sharing a common ancestor with the green tree iguanas of Central and South America, the marine iguanas are black and sometimes red in color. While they feed on algae in the ocean (and have stubbier snouts to do this easily), they don't swim very well. They sort of look they are dog paddling across the surface of the water, like they don't really want to be there. Nor do they appear very intelligent. When trying to stay warm, they lay low on the ground, absorbing warmth from the rocks on which they're basking. When they try to cool down, they raise themselves up to catch the breeze. Why they don't just jump in the water to cool off is a mystery to me. We frequently saw basking iguanas repeatedly knocked off their perch by an onslaught of waves. Often a higher perch was available for occupancy, but the animal would just go back to his old spot and get knocked off over and over again.
Depending on who you talk to, marine iguanas can live between 60 and 80 years. Like the sea lions and tortoises, the iguanas don't seem to mind when you're around. They just lie there seemingly oblivious to your presence.

On Isabella, there's also a cool place to look at white tip sharks resting in the water. They share this space with about a billion crabs and iguanas.

For a change of pace, our tour included some horseback riding to the largest crater (inactive) in the archipelago and a hike around the old lava fields. This portion of our tour got off to a rocky start and jumbled our itinerary a little since, it being Saturday, the owner of our horses had spent the entire previous evening drinking, and was apparently to drunk to show up with our mounts. Nevertheless, he did appear the next day, and we were off.

It was one of those not so surprising episodes gringos encounter in Latin American countries where safety and liability standards are profoundly different. In the States, we're used to the idea that our entertainment providers are to some extent liable for our safety. Down here, they just assume that if you've signed up to ride horses, you know how to ride a horse, which is sort of a natural thing I guess. Either way, our horses frequently took off at a pace well beyond comfortable for most of us. One girl in our group who does ride, said that the pace we took was something riders of two to three years' experience might undertake. Agnes developed bloody blisters shortly from trying to hold on so tight. While I got used to the gallop (though I didn't really have any control of the horse) my ass was one massive bruise by the end of the trip. I don't know how people get used to the pounding your bum takes when riding a horse that is running. Or perhaps you're supposed to use your legs – still not sure. One girl's horse tried to knock her off by running into the brush, which I guess is a natural equine tactic. Afterwards, our guide mentioned that he'd had three tourists thrown from their horses in the last six months.

We eventually dismounted our horses to hike up to the crags where we could get a look at the expansive stretch of lava fields below. Our guide told us two amusing stories, both relating to the lava field and humans. First, the Ecuadorian military once thought it would be an instructive training exercise to drop a bunch of soldiers at one end of the field and make them cross to the other side. I'm not entirely sure of the purpose of this effort but it was supposed to take three days for the crossing. After day five, when no one had shown up at the designated rendezvous point, people started to worry and rescue teams were dispatched to find the lost soldiers. They too got lost. Anyway, to make a long story short, most folks did finally make it out alive, (the last of the survivors rescued after nine days) and only one soldier perished. Apparently, the soldiers' boots failed to hold up against the hot jagged lava rocks and the soles tore, leaving the soldiers shoe-less and wandering in the jagged moonscape. They also ran out of water.

Story-two concerns a prison that once housed the worst of the worst Ecuadorian criminals here. While I understand the desire to keep convicts away from society in general, transporting them more than 600 miles to an island seems like overkill to me. That said, a very brutal prison did exist here until the late 1940's, I believe. The guards, unhappy with their plight and living so far from civilization with a bunch of thugs, took out their frustrations on the prisoners. The signature effort at making the inmates lives miserable was the pointless construction of a wall made of lava rock, called the Wall of Tears. The wall, 24-feet high, was constructed by prisoners who delivered the rocks by hand for miles to the construction site. This was done without benefit of gloves or protective clothing against the jagged stones. Charges who caved from the heat and exhaustion were sometimes whipped to death. Anyway, eventually the prisoners rebelled, word got out about the inhumane conditions, and the prison was shuttered. Built for sport, the wall never kept anything in or out, and still exists.

Isabella Island is also the site of what must be one of the largest goat eradication efforts ever undertaken. Goats, introduced as domestic livestock by early settlers, for a long time ate everything in site, destroying the natural landscape and more importantly, out-competing tortoises for food. Anyway, over the last couple of years, nearly 170,000 goats have been killed, leaving about 50 to go. The eradication project occurred in three phases. In the first, hunters were spread about a hundred yards apart and just walked across the island, shooting every goat in sight. In the second phase, helicopters were employed to shoot most of the remainder, especially those that wandered into the lava fields. And lastly, some goats were implanted with gps transponders. Being social animals, they would seek the company of the few remaining goats on the island, unwittingly bringing the hunters and death to the new group. Sounds like some sort of sci-fi movie, no?

Throughout our trip, it's worth mentioning that we saw a bunch of birds: boobies, frigates, finches, swallows and the occasional penguin but while it was close to get up close to them, they weren't all that cool to me. The guide would sometimes point out a finch and describe something about the size of its beak, but we were usually looking at something else.

Our last couple of days were spent on Santa Cruz Island. Here we saw a lot more sea lions, iguanas, and giant tortoises. To this point, most of the tortoises we'd seen were captive and even the ones that occasionally crossed the street, blocking traffic, had come from the breeding centers. On Santa Cruz, however, they were all wild. We'd thought beforehand that the wild tortoises would be few and far between, but even in the forest, they appeared every 75 feet or so. Viewed upon from a distance they looked like Sherman tanks in the forest – for some reason I was thinking Battle of the Bulge (or maybe I've got my WWII flicks mixed up).

Strangely enough, when observing many of these Galapagos animals in the wild, I could refer only to movies I'd seen for any visual comparison for what I was seeing. The tortoises in the wild, with their prehistoric rostrums and lumbering movements also looked like the something from Jurassic Park. Crabs, which are present all over the coast, appeared in greater abundance than we'd ever seen and move with a fascinating precision, all eight legs pumping in unison over a jagged rock while the body glides without moving up or down. I liked to jump around and scare these crabs so they would run away in unison. The scene before you, oddly enough is like something out of the Alien V Predator movies (though in this case, the creatures were fleeing). I guess saying movies are the only things with which we can compare what we've seen, is simply like saying we'd never seen anything like it. But beyond that, one can easily feel like he's surrounded himself with a prehistoric and enchanted world in The Galapagos.