This entry is being typed en route to Fiji from L.A.  Mom just joined us in L.A.  With the help of a couple of good sleeping pills, I got a little sleep during the 3 flights yesterday; the kids did not fare so well.  I’m taking advantage of some down time with a little table in front of me to write the final Galapagos blog entry.  My 2nd round of sleeping pills will kick in shortly …
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3 days later … We’ve been in Fiji for 3 days now – we’re staying with friends Rhonda, Henry & Ben on one of the outer islands (Henry is from here).  Absolutely beautiful. Fantastic snorkeling yesterday.  Great fishing today.  Tenting seaside has been idyllic. Very hot but so far we’ve had cooling breezes.  Internet connectivity a challenge here hence the dearth of communication … but we’ll be busy writing in the days to come …
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The Galapagos are remarkable for many reasons.  Jake talked about the amazing “underworld”.  Kaia talked about the wonderful marine iguanas and sea lions.  I wrote earlier about the boobies and other lovely birds.  And Yvonne talked about the story of species decimation and subsequent recovery efforts.  Perhaps what is most obviously remarkable about the Galapagos is the geologic story they tell.  They are a living lab of volcanism, that is so easily explored on a cruise such as ours.

To understand these islands, you have to understand the concept of plate tectonics over a “hot spot”.  A hot spot is a place in the earth’s mantle that has magma welling up to the crust (through convection).  Scientists don’t really understand what creates these hot spots deep in the earth’s core, but the upwelling lava ultimately breaks through the crust and creates volcanoes.  Add to this the reality of plate tectonics – whereby the crust is moving over the magma below – and you get a string of volcanoes as the plate moves over the hotspot.  The most famous of such a string is the archipelago of the Hawaiian Islands.  The island over the hot spot is usually the largest and is “active” (eg. the newest island Hawaii is furthest west) while the oldest island has moved past the hot spot and is now inactive and heavily eroded.

This is exactly what is going on in the Galapagos.  The plate that the islands are sitting on is moving east, just as the Hawaiian islands are.  So not suprisingly, the eastern islands of San Cristobal and Floreanna are nearly flat and highly eroded, while the western islands of Isabela and Fernandina have high, active volcanoes.  In fact they recently discovered (underwater) “sea mounts” off the east side of the islands (see map below).  These mounts were Galapagos Islands 4 million years ago before they were eroded away.  They also filled in a missing piece of the evolution story for scientists.  The oldest present day island is about 5 million years.  But evolutionary scientists felt like 5 million years was not enough to explain the adaptive changes of present day wildlife species.  But adding in the 4 million years of these previous islands (now sea mounts) apparently completes the evolutionary story.

I’ll start the photo story on the island of Santiago which lies in the middle of the grouping.  We went ashore on lava that looked like it had cooled just days or years ago.  In fact it was just a little more than 100 years old.

It was remarkable to walk on this lava – the patterns were fantastic.  You very easily could imagine that a liquid had cooled.

That afternoon we climbed to the top of Bartholome Island. 

Bartholome too was an old volcano.  But in this case, you could clearly see the small “parasitic” cones where small fissures allowed magma to form cones around the main cone.

ok … just woke up.  3 more hours to Fiji ..

China Hat was a volcanic “plug” surrounded with slopes of lava.  The main attraction here was a sea lion nursery (that Kaia showed photos of).  However I was enthralled with the power of the surf crashing onto the lava shores.

Here’s a photo I included in an earlier blog post, showing the tunnels left behind when a volcano subsided and the lava retreated from its lava tube.

In the last few days we moved west to the newest (and most active) islands of Isabela and Fernandina.  Isabela has no less than 6 volcanoes on it (its “plate” was moving a little north-south as it also moved east, hence the pattern of volcanoes (see map at start of this entry).  These volcanoes are at about 1400m, and have massive craters in them.  Even though they haven’t spewed lava in the past 30 years, they are still active; a large crater lake disappeared from volcanic activity about 20 years ago.  We went ashore on Isabella and climbed up past a crater lake just inside the island that was part salt and part fresh.

Fernandina is the youngest island, and fully erupted in 2010.  Victor was leading a tour at Genovesa Island at the time and received permission to change his itinerary to take his clients to see the eruption.  Now THAT would have been pretty cool!

One of our favorite shore visits was on the smaller island if Rabida, known as the “red island”.  I believe it is mostly a high iron content that led to this colouration.

I’ll finish out the blog with some photos that capture a bit of what it’s like to live aboard a Galapagos cruise boat.

We parted company with our crew and cruise companions upon arriving back at Baltra Island.  The cruise had surpassed any of our expectations.  Unfortunately expensive – few folks (well … OK … 60,000/yr) are as fortunate as us to be able to experience this.  But probably just as well for those lovely creatures.

Wow … the Galapagos.  Next entry we’ll be back on mainland.  Until then ….

Cam

  

The Galapagos Islands are renowned for their unusual birds.  The Islands’ birds have evolved independently of mainland species, and have evolved to adapt to the unusual geographic conditions.  And like other land and water species, most of these birds have no predators, so they are indifferent to human and other animal proximity.  Scientists are not positive how the evolutionary ancestors of these birds first arrived on the islands.  Perhaps blown way off course from the mainland.  Perhaps floated for weeks on debris washed out in flooding mainland rivers.
The first stop on our cruise was Genovesa Island which is the furthest to the NE in the grouping.  First views when coming up on deck after sleeping during the sailing was that of red-footed boobies dive bombing into the water beak-first for fish … in droves – hundreds at a time.  Our first shore excursion was all about birds.  Birds were EVERYWHERE!  Sitting on the ground, sitting in bushes, sitting on rocks.  They would not even flinch as we walked by.

Genovesa Island is also home to thousands of Nasca boobies.  These fishing birds are perhaps less dramatic looking, except for the chicks that appear as big cotton balls.

Mixed amongst the boobies were Galapagos lava gulls and night herons –  all equally indifferent to us gawkers.

After snorkeling in the afternoon, we went by zodiac across the bay (Genovesa Island is a volcanic crater – the crater forms the bay, with an opening to the sea) and scampered up some stairs built into the cliff to explore more bird habitat.

Even more boobies here.  You literally had to walk around them, and had to be careful not to back up onto one.  We walked from the inner part of the crater to the outside on the open ocean where we saw a Galapagos short-eared owls were hunting Galapagos petrels (you might notice a trend here ….  we realized it is pretty easy to name/identify the birds – just put “Galapagos” in front of whatever … because they are all endemic here)

Other days took us to other islands that hosted other birds.  “Darwin’s Finches” are well known.  Darwin collected specimens when on the islands in 1835, and while sailing back to England he noted how identical looking brown finches from different islands had markedly different beaks.  Similarly with mockingbirds from different isles. This is one of the things that got him thinking about the concept of “adaptation” and evolution.  Each island had different vegetation and seeds, so beaks were specialized.

Frigate birds also have a significant presence in the Galapagos, but are found elsewhere too.  These birds catch fish, but are unable to swim or take off after being in the water (they die if they end up in the water).  Sailors of years gone by always welcomed the sight of frigate birds because it meant they were getting close to land (the birds have to stay reasonable close to shore).  We saw frigate birds on land, but were most impressed with their inclination to fly with our boat when we were under way.  They would fly about 3 ft off the side of the ship … sometimes 5 or 6 at a time … and were so close that we could actually have touched them if we’d have tried.  It reminds me of dolphins liking to swim just off the bow of a moving boat.

Galapagos hawks were the top land predators.  We’d see them circling around above when we went ashore.  They eat mostly lava lizards, snakes and especially marine iguanas.

On our second last day we visited Punta Espinosa on Fernadina Island where we encountered the flightless cormorant.  These guys made their way to the Galapagos Islands via flight, but food was so readily available in the water (fish!) that they have evolved to become swimmers, not flyers.  Their wings are now tiny, and useless, though they still like to dry them in the wind like cormorants elsewhere with “real” wings.

Cam

The Galapagos Islands have a mythic, even iconic reputation.   Growing up, I’d heard stories of bizarre, prehistoric animals that were not afraid of humans, living on stark volcanic islands.  And the significance of the islands in spurring on Darwin’s ideas of evolution are well known.  But beyond that, I really had little idea why these islands drew in so many visitors.  But now I understand.  I am writing this at 6AM on day 6 of our cruise of the islands – then sun just came up, and poured light onto the top of the huge volcano that is Fernandina Island.  Across the channel is the largest of the islands – Isabella – that is home to no less than 5 large volcanoes.  Their peaks soar to 1600m, which is impressive considering the size of the island.  Until this morning, the peaks of volcanoes have been shrouded in cloud, but this morning they are all in full view.  Wow.
There is much to recount of our time here – it is hard to know where to start.  Instead of sharing a day by day account of our activities and discoveries, we will instead share by theme – the land, water creatures, land creatures, birds etc.  We will also describe the challenges faced by the islands in terms of introduced species and growing pressures of tourism.  In this post I will just set the stage by describing our first day on the islands, and a bit of human history here.
We had no troubles convincing Kaia and Jake to get out on the morning of flight departure from coastal city Guayaquil.  The airport is spacious and modern.  The 1st stop, before checking in, is the inspection station, where they x-ray packs and look in anything suspicious for plants/animals/fruit that could be considered “introduced” species.  Next stop was to the ATM, which proceeded to deny us access to cash, but upon inspection of our bank account a few minutes later (thank goodness for airport WiFi!) we learned that the $300 we’d asked for had indeed been deducted from our account!  A flurry of internet/skyping left us virtually no further ahead.  We have our bank working on that one and will have to sort it out later …
The flight was packed … and it appeared that the competing airline flight that landed 30 minutes after us was also packed.  That adds up about right, because the islands receive on average about 160 tourists per day – 60000 a year!!   That doesn’t sound like a lot, until you’ve been on the islands and see the very limited infrastructure for handling that number.  We got some great sneak peaks out the windows, including a tiny island that Jake and Yvonne would dive at the next day.

The first order of business upon arrival at the airport on Baltra Island is to pay US $100 National Park fee.  Pretty steep.  But clearly it is not a deterrent to tourism, and the Park has their hands full in their introduced species eradication and marine monitoring programs, so if the money is being used wisely, no problem.  The largest center in the Galapagos Islands is Puerto Ayora (pop. 12,000) which is at the southern end of Santa Cruz island. 

The airport is at the northern end of Baltra Island (remember you can enlarge any image by clicking on it).  By the time we drove across Baltra, took the short ferry to Santa Cruz then drove the 50 minute bus to Puerto Ayora, I got to wondering why the airport could not have been located on Santa Cruz, close to Puerto Ayora, because the island is relatively flat near the coast.  But it turns out that the US built a military airport on Baltra to help watch the Pacific during WWII, and this facility morphed into the existing civilian facility.

Puerto Ayora is basic, with a rapidly expanded population, but the waterfront is nicely developed and tourism planning facilities abound. Yvonne and Jake quickly got to work booking their SCUBA dive the next day, while Kaia and I lined up a double kayak to explore in.
We had a quick introduction to wildlife in the Galapagos when we saw a half dozen sea lions lounging on the town wharf.  Oblivious to gawking tourists.  And not 30ft away a group of equally indifferent marine iguanas.  We would be seeing lots more of these guys in the days to come!

Yvonne and Jake had 2 great dives on sites just north of Santa Cruz.  This was their very 1st dive (since certifying) so they had their own dive assistant which gave them confidence.  As a 12 yr old Jake is certified to only 40 ft (as opposed to adult 60ft) so they stayed within those bounds.  But still saw tons …. white tip reef sharks, school of manta rays, green sea turtles, and tons of colourful fish.

Meanwhile, Kaia and I set out in our kayak with snorkels.

He had a great laugh as we paddled out of the harbour and saw how crafty the sea lions were in staking out comfortable lounge positions.

Moments later we see our 1st swimming marine iguana.

We paddled across some bays and through some interesting coves and saw lots of the Galapagos birds, including our first blue footed boobie.  These guys are probably the most famous wildlife of the Galapagos Islands, and you can imagine how much fun the t-shirt and post card designers have with the “boobie” spin-off jokes.

We donned our snorkelling gear and headed out on a reef, seeing some great fish.  Kaia is rather afraid of fish, so she clung pretty tight to my hand.  But as she got used to them, she was able to navigate solo through schools of them.  But nothing could have prepared us for the sight as we turned our heads to see a GIANT (5ft long) green sea turtle swimming right beside us – we could have reached out to touch it.  Actually, we had to swim away from it to prevent bumping into it.  Hard to explain what it’s like swimming next to these gentle giants.  I went ashore to get my GoPro camera (to learn it was out of battery 😦  )   and within another few minutes we either found another turtle or re-found our 1st guy, and swam for 5 minutes with him.  That pretty much made our day, so we headed back to town and felt like we had something to talk about when Jake and Yvonne got back and shared their diving adventure.

We had time after reassembling to hike the 2.5 km to Tortuga beach.  Beautiful clear water, white sand and great fun in the waves.
We visited the Charles Darwin Research Station and tortoise breeding station the next morning.  Galapagos’s famous giant tortoises are actually under great threat (more on that later), so they’ve resorted to collecting eggs and incubating and hatching them onsite.

We were excited to leave Puero Ayora before lunch because we were headed to meet our cruise boat – the Floreana.  It was waiting for us in the Itabaca channel (which we’d crossed a couple days back).

Nice boat!  There are 5 classes of cruise boats for the Galapagos.  We were in the middle “tourist superior” class.  We were told by so many people and guide books that you get what you pay for in the Galapagos, and if you want a good itinerary, a good, English speaking guide (so important!), decent food, ventilated cabins, and not too much bouncing around at sea, you need to avoid the bottom class or two.  Yvonne’s mom Betty had hoped to join us for this part of our trip, but in the end decided that the going from ship to zodiac and ashore from zodiac and rough trails would be too much for her mobility.  But she instead helped us out financially with the Galapagos trip … we otherwise would likely have been in the economy boat.  Thanks, Betty!
Onboard we met our travel mates for the 8 days.  A middle age couple from Switzerland, a father and 20-something daughter from Germany, a couple of younger women also from Switzerland, a young couple from Australia, and a couple of VERY energetic, traveled, fit and game senior traveling companions  from Victoria, BC and Minnesota.  They both reminded me of my own mom.  We were 14 in total.  Ship had capacity of 16.

We met our crew of 7 that evening at dinner.  Captain, mate, sailor, engineer, cook, purser/host/cook, and our guide Victor.  Victor had been guiding in the Galapagos for 21 years, spoke fabulous English, was enthusiastic about all our adventures and had a good sense of humour.  Rooms were small, with a bunk bed in each.  But dining area lovely, and great common lounge up top.
First trip outing was back to Santa Cruz island to visit the “El Chatos” Tortoise reserve.  Here you walk among the many many wild tortoises.  You can get as close as 2m to them … beyond which they do a little hiss then retreat into their shell.

The attraction at this site are the “lava tubes”.  When this part of the island was formed, lava had been running through underground tubes.  When the volcano/lava retreated, it left quite remarkable tunnels.

Then back to our ship for a celebratory drink and dinner, then set sail for Genovesa Island in the north.  So all these adventures …and we hadn’t even started our cruise!  A good omen for things to come.

Cam