The Galapagos
Trip Start
Dec 30, 2007
1
47
50
Trip End
Jun 22, 2008
Galapagos Islands,
Ecuador
Saturday, June 21, 2008
I came to the Galapagos Islands with mixed excitement and dread. I'd fallen in love with the place when I saw the nature documentary "Galapagos" 20 years ago; but what if it didn't measure up? That concern was particularly acute because everyone I met says that it is a trip of a lifetime but that the highlight is the playful sea lions. I can get playful sea lions a couple of hours from Wellington, so I really hoped there was more to it. In the end the islands did not disappoint me. I saw everything that you could expect to see, and although I have seen much of it before, never all in one place. Perhaps the most dramatic aspect of the wildlife is how tame it all is. Sea lions will sleep on the path and barely open their eyes as you walk past. Ditto iguanas. Even nesting birds seem to have no sense of fear.
We took a seven night tour with GAP Adventures, and can have no complaints about any aspect of the trip (except the cost, but there seems no way around that)
"I'm a star"
. I was always frustrated not to have more time for snorkeling (which could have been arranged with more travel at night and less by day), but that is my nature ... It was bizarre to find that of the 16 of us, there were four honeymooning couples. But what a great choice of honeymoon.
The islands seem not to suit people particularly well. It seems that they were occupied without ever being settled in pre-Hispanic times and early European attempts at colonisation tended to end in murder. The attempts to settle them as penal colonies probably didn't help, but almost all settlements into the 19th century failed tragically.
A rough itinerary is:
day one - Santa Cruz - giant tortoises in the wild.
day two - Seymour and Santiago - iguanas, birds (boobies, frigates) and snorkeling
day three - Bartolome - beautiful volcanic landscapes, penguins, sharks, turtles (black turtle cove)
day four - South Plaza - iguanas, sea lions; Santa Fe - marine/land iguanas, sea lions, sharks
day five - Santiago - Interpretation Centre, sea lions, fish
day six - Espanola - sea turtles, marine iguanas, wave albatross, bf boobies, nasca boobies, many sea lions, fish
day seven - Floreana - greater flamingo, sharks, Devil's Crown, fish
day eight - Santa Cruz - tortoises in captivity
Crumbed sea lion
.The more detailed stuff below is only for fanatics ...
Birds
Galapagos is bird heaven. Everywhere we went we were followed by frigate birds, the males with their red wattle hanging except in courtship when it becomes an enormous balloon. They would trail the boat seemingly without moving a wing, and although they cannot get wet they seem to be experts at plucking things from the surface of the water without getting their feathers wet.
The first real action I saw was crossing from Baltra to Santa Cruz where many birds were diving from great heights into the water seeking fish. These were the famous blue footed boobie, and they are one of the most common birds we saw. On North Seymour we saw them sitting on eggs, dancing their ponderous courtship ritual (which involves much slow motion stomping of those striking blue feet), and a great deal of diving for fish. We never saw the Nasca boobies feeding, as they prefer the open sea, and we saw no red footed boobies at all.
Pelicans were everywhere too, and love to perch on the zodiacs while they wait to pounce on fish
Domed tortoises in action
. Like the boobies, they will dive from a great height, but their bulk prevents them immersing and the splash they make is tremendous.The little finches are common and unremarkable, were it not for their historic importance as evidence for the theory of evolution. It was great to see them, thick beaks and sharp, much as they must have seemed in 1835 when Darwin saw them.
I had not known that flamingos are found here, but for once this bird (greater flamingo) is not endemic, coming instead from North America. Also seen were wave albatross, Galapagos hawks ...
The stars were the penguins, They are not spectacular, and are really only notable for being the third smallest in the world and the species found furthest north, hovering only just south of the equator. But they are the highlight because on day three we snorkeled with several and watched for a long time one hunting a school of small fish in water just three meters deep. It gave us a tremendous view of all the action, as the bird zipped through the middle of the school and the fish effortlessly parted, keeping a crucial six inches or so of space between them and the predator
Frigate bird
. Although most of his passes were failures the penguin caught two fish while I watched and ate them at the surface, before heading back to the hunt. I could have watched for ages.Reptiles
One creature I was particularly keen to see was the marine iguana. I saw them in their hundreds, mostly trying to warm up on land. It is a very tough place to be a marine lizard, for the water is not warm, and the cold blooded creatures must be playing a delicate metabolic game in measuring eating against the risk of growing too torpid to make it back to land. It was fantastic to see them coming in from the sea at Floreana, and lounging around in great piles to warm up. I was greatly surprised to watch from a cliff top several swimming in deep rough water in the vicinity of a gathering of sea turtles. It seemed a long way from any likely source of sea weed, but they were heading for the shelter of a rocky platform where hundreds of their species lay in the sun. We saw a number of different species, but the most striking were the red iguanas, apparently taking their colouring from the weed they eat.
I had hoped to see one feeding underwater, but this was not to be. The closest I came was snorkeling around a drowned volcanic crater called Devil's Crown while one clung to a vertical cliff eating the weed that grew in the margin between the tides
Guess who?
. Their long claws saved me from getting a better view: he slipped and hung by just one claw, but hung on. Land iguanas are larger and also vegetarian. They seem to get by by eating grass and waiting for cactus fruits to fall. It seems a peaceful existence and not much seems to want to eat them. They are found everywhere including on the runway at Baltra airport. I personally think that they are perfectly engaging and cute animals, but an informal survey of our boat suggests that this reaction is abnormal. On one island (South Plaza) they interbreed with the marine iguanas producing a much more lively hybrid who will also eat the cactus fruit, but does not wait for it to fall, but climbs (perhaps using the climbing skills inherited from the marine side of the family).
We saw sea turtles numerous times - from the cliff at Espanola and in the harbour of the same island, in the breeding ground of the mangrove bordered black turtle cove (green and hawk's bill) - but our only chance to swim with them came with our very last swim, at Post Office Bay. On that swim we came across two beautiful large (shell c 75cm) green turtles and swam with one for a long time. As always, they were placid, unbothered (seemingly indifferent), graceful and majestic
land iguana
. The first's shell was thick with algae, while the second, which I only saw briefly, had a clean dark shell.The most famous reptile of all is the Galapagos tortoise, of which there are many species (I don't know how many). Thy only ones we saw in the wild were the domed shelled variety that live in the highlands of Santa Cruz, sharing the land with cows and horses. (Although the arrangement looks cosy, we were told the horses would seek out and trample nests to eliminate competition; I believe it happens but not with the malice attributed by our guide.) When startled they would give a 'hiss' like their smaller brethren, but it sounds more like a sigh (probably accompanied by thoughts along the lines of 'not another one of these strange animals'). They are enormous, slow, ponderous animals, fond of mud and vegetation (they will eat over 200 kinds of plant). We saw five, and I could easily believe that the biggest was approaching the maximum weight of 250 kgs. There are smaller species too, particularly on the saddle back side of the family of which we saw many in the Charles Darwin Research Centre which raises young turtles and has returned some 12,000 to the wild. If any Galapagos animal has reason not to be tame it is the tortoises: hundreds of thousands were removed by sailors as a living larder. But no amount of distrust can save you when your only defence is to sit still
Male frigate bird on display
.Mammals
The sea lions have this category to themselves. Some members glimpsed a dolphin, but otherwise it was sea lions all the way. They are very numerous, incredibly tame, extraordinary playful. They love to interact, and will mimic swimmers, for example they will easily be worked into an extraordinary series of tight turns simply by your trying to turn with them - it seems to inspire them to show you up. More than once I simply stood off from a couple and watched them, and then suddenly found a whole bunch had come over to investigate. On one spot I had seven looking at me, all packed in so closely that it was hard to separate out all the flippers. We played 'fetch the snorkel' with one adult and very nearly never got it back. Sealions understand this game to be played by grabbing the snorkel and taking off at high speed, before leaving it to sink. The game would probably work better if you could keep up with the animals...
I was a bit surprised by one difference between NZ and GI sea lions. In NZ they love to play chicken by swimming at the human and turning at the last possible second. GI sea lions don't do this in the same way - although they swim at you, they turn much earlier and it seems not to be part of the sport
Nasca booby
.There is a beach on Espanola where many sealions sleep, and the young frolic with the humans in the shallows. It is the easiest place to enjoy them and watch them jump through the waves, but you can't help but swim with sealions wherever you go.
We saw some very large 'cubs' nursing. Apparently they will nurse up to three years old, by which time they are mature and may have cubs of their own. So you may see a mother suckling her young, while the suckling suckles hers. Also because they breed every year, a mother may be feeding three cubs simultaneously. Sounds exhausting. No wonder they sleep so much.
Fish and the like
Almost everyone found the snorkeling to be a highlight, which justifies my disappointment that we couldn't do more of it. While lacking the colourful dazzle of tropical reefs, the GI has many beautiful fish including parrot fish, king angels, Cortez wrasse, moorish idols and plenty of interesting but not colourful fish (trigger fish of various kinds, hogfish), very large numbers of smaller fish in schools and, of course, sharks
The greater flamingo
.While snorkeling we saw only white tip reef sharks (different from the ones I have seen in Australia and Fiji however, with a much rounder snout), with three at Bartolome (two quite large and one smaller) which I could get close too, and a small four foot long one at Devil's Crown which took off as soon as it saw me. However, we also saw blacktips patrolling the shallows on two occasions. The first was around a seal colony and the sharks were big (probably approaching the 2.7m maximum) so I assumed they were after the small seals. The adults seemed quite untroubled. The second was by a seal-less beach, and I am told that they were looking for stingrays.
We also saw one beautiful octopus, amazingly hard to see even though caught on an exposed rock. He was camouflaged a deep purple, and when he finally decided that he had been spotted he took off with the tentacles curled defensively (not trailing), and wedged himself in a crevice between two rocks. By now he was white and he sat protecting himself with his suckers. It is such a pity that this was one animal that still had a sense of fear. There are obviously plenty of predators in the water.
