Arrival in Galapagos

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  Galapagos Islands, Ecuador
Friday, March 25, 2005

I made it to the Galapagos. My flight left Guayaquil at 11am yesterday and got to Isla Baltra in the Galapagos 1 hour 20 minutes later. To get from the airport to the main town of Puerto Ayora I had to take a bus then get on a ferry to the island of Santa Cruz and then take another bus ride for 45 minutes to Puerto Ayora. I saw a sea lion while on the short ferry ride.

The landscape here is very rugged as these are volcanic islands. The rocks are mostly dark and jagged and the vegetation is mostly cacti and small brush. Yesterday afternoon I walked 5km to Tortuga Bay which had the most beautiful beach Iīve ever seen. The sand was white and nearly as fine as flour. The water was translucent. It was just spectacular. There were lots of pelicans flying about and I even stumbled upon a whole family of iguanas just lounging in the shade.

I met up with Susanna from California who will also be on my boat and the two of us bumped into a researcher from Harvard Medical School who is a geneticist and he is here in the Galapagos collecting samples from finches to take back to Boston for analysis.

This morning I walked through an underground lava tunnel. Itīs a cave that formed when molten lava was flowing faster in the center than on the outside, so the outside of the lava cooled first forming a hollow tube that you can walk through. The tunnel was about 1km in length and I had to use a flashlight to see as it was entirely dark inside. Unlike other caves Iīve visited in the past, if you look at the walls you can still see the streaks of flowing lava that have since cooled.

Last night I got a chance to look at the boat that will be my home for the next 7 days. Itīs called the Merak and itīs a real sailboat! Most of the other tourist boats here are these giant ugly box-like boats that donīt even have a mast or anything. Itīs like a dream to be able to sail around the Galapagos for the next week. My only concern is that because itīs a small boat, it holds 8 passengers and 4 crew, I may get a bit sea sick for the first few days. However, Iīve already got my sea sickness pills so Iīm prepared. Basically we will be visiting a different island each day for 7 days, and we will mostly spend the evenings sailing between the islands. Really, I canīt wait to get on this boat because the town of Puerto Ayora (where I stayed last night) is ugly and full of people.

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