Spending time with honeymooners in the Galapagos
Trip Start
Sep 28, 2007
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89
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Trip End
Jun 25, 2008
Puerto Ayora, Ecuador
Friday, June 20, 2008
The group was a mix of Canadians, Irish, English, Australians and us. Of the 16, there was four couples on their honeymoon, which amused the crew greatly.
By the time we met our actual guide Victor we had had four previous guides: one to give us a briefing in Quito and hand out duffel bags, one to take us to the airport, one to give us our boarding passes and one to meet us at the airport and accompany us on the buses and ferry until we were picked up in dinghies and taken to the boat where we would be spending the next seven nights
Sea lions play on the pier
. And what a boat it is. Each of the eight cabins has a separate shower and toilet plus three large lounge areas - a bit flasher than we are used to, that is for sure.
Lunch was served as soon as we arrived but there was too much of a swell and I started feeling very sick. I was pleased to get back on land that afternoon when we took a bus up into the highlands of the island to go and see the famous Galapagos giant tortoises.
The first one we looked at closely was having a mud bath to cool down and he was huge, his shell a metre long. From the smoothness of his shell, our guide said he was probably 180 years old and could live until he was 220 (which made sense of the t-shirt that had one tortoise saying to the other "yes, I know I was unfaithful, but that was 150 years ago").
We saw four others, some walking along with their massive legs or eating grass, ripping it up like a cow. We gasped when we saw the width of their poops.
Galapagos is famous for the fearlessness of the animals and there it not only applied to the tortoises but also little grain eating birds that would sit within 30cm away feeding on grass seed as though you weren't there
Sea lions playing
.I spent the night on the boat feeling sick but found the sea sickness tablets Mareol worked well and didn't make me drowsy.
Day two
After a delicious breakfast (we were eating like kings) we went ashore to North Seymour Island. As soon as we were on land we saw a swallow-tail gull feeding its chick a regurgitated fish and a sea lion pup having a drink of its mum's milk.
It was a great time to visit as the frigate birds and blue-footed boobies were in mating season.
The frigate birds are massive with a tail that splits. The males had their red pouch on their necks inflated to attract the females. The pouches look amazing, like bright red balloons, and take three hours to inflate or dis-inflate so we saw some flying with their balloon throats. Many of the males were sitting on the branches with their pouch puffed out, their way of saying 'come get me'. We saw one female sweep down to where one was displaying himself, so something was working for him
Who is ridiculously cute
. The blue-footed boobies were also cool to see with their most amazing light blue feet. They do a little mating dance that we got to witness too.
On the island we also saw large land iguanas, marine iguanas and lots of lava lizards, who were also courting, which had the males doing what looked like fast press-ups, it was so funny.
We then went snorkeling and saw lots of brightly coloured fish and got to swim with the Galapagos sea lions, who swim right at you and change direction at the last minute. We had swum with sea lions in New Zealand so we weren't as buzzed out as the others, but it was still cool.
After that we sailed to Chinese Hat Island next to Santiago Island. We went snorkeling from the beach that had Californian sea lions lounging on it. We saw massive starfish (40cm long and at least five centimetres thick) and a small stingray half covered in sand.
We also saw a handful of the rare Galapagos penguins sitting out on rocks
A giant tortoise blows bubbles
. They are just a bit bigger than the Little Blue Penguins we get in New Zealand.Day three Bartolome
The Galapagos has lots of active or dormant volcanoes and early on day three we waked to the lighthouse on Bartolome Island for amazing views: black lava crater rings, red and yellow rock and turquoise waves.
The landscapes we were visiting were all so different from each other.
We went snorkeling around the lava rock coastline and were amazed. We got to see several white tip reef sharks and stingrays, huge schools of fish and, best of all, a fishing penguin who was zipping right past us like a torpedo and would pop up for air right in front of us. He was so cute but not particularly successful at catching the tiny blue fish.
Over the middle of the day we moved close to Santa Cruz Island and visited Black Turtle Cove. A mangrove haven, it was yet again a totally different environment
Amazing male frigate bird
. As we came in I saw some tiny dark triangles sticking out of the water. It turned out they were the edges of an eagle ray and then we saw some golden rays, swimming out of the inlet.We turned the motor off and oared deeper in and saw loads of sea turtles swimming around, sticking up their yellow heads for air. We could even hear them sucking in big breaths. It was amazing. They were pretty big too, about 60cm long and really graceful in the water.
Day four
We stopped at South Plaza Island early in the morning. It is covered in large pricky pear cactus trees that are as much as 800 years-old. The island has large populations of land iguanas and marine iguanas and it's the only place in the Galapagos where the marine iguanas will compete with the land iguanas for territory and if they win they get the female land iguana and so hybrid land and marine iguanas are born, but are sterile. We didn't see any hybrids unfortunately.
The island was covered in fur sea lions braying away like sick sheep and swallow-tail gulls
Flying with his balloon
.Our next stop was Santa Fe island for snorkeling and a walk. The bay we stopped in had two pretty sand beaches that were totally covered in fur sea lions, which are completely non-fussed by humans.
We were sad to hear that a little pup had probably been abandoned by its mum and would likely die soon as seals don't adopt pups without mums.
Amazingly a mum will suckle her young for up to three years so might have three sea lions after her milk at once, which explained why you see them lying in heaps of three or four with one large and two or three progressively smaller ones.
Just as it was time to leave, we saw the fins of black-tipped sharks close in, cruising the coast, looking for seal pups our guide told us. We walked out to get a closer look until our guide told us to watch our toes.
The groups of sea lions are often protected by a large bull, but in this case he had died out at sea and had been washed in (which explained the smell) so there was no one on guard
Everybody loves boobies
. The larger seals in the water seemed unconcerned but we willed a small one to stay where he was in the shallows.That evening we dropped the anchor next to the main town on San Cristobal Island (Puerto Baquerizo Moreno). With great excitement a number of us headed into 'town' for a few beers but the party didn't really start until we got back on board and the duty free came out. We weren't supposed to bring alcohol on board as the boat had a bar with reasonable prices, the brochure said. This was hardly the case as a 50c beer on the mainland was $2.50 on the boat. Luckily we had all been skeptical and brought supplies. Mark and I bought some dubious white spirit in Quito with hints of fruit (750ml cost only slightly more than a small beer on the boat to give an idea of its cheap and nastiness)and some powered lemonade to avoid having to bring litres of soft drink on board. I thought the made up concoction was pretty foul but the others declared it tasted like lemon sherbet and gulped it down with extra splaces of golden Bacardi. It was also given the name truth serum for its effect, but I still claim it was the amount that got drunk before our concoction that was the real cause of the confessions and seedy hangovers.
The Irish on board kept up their country mens reputation for liking a drink. A couple of times on the trip the four of them were overheard reminiscing about one kind of alcoholic drink or another before midday or discussing, in depth, the merits and shortcomings of Dublin's pubs. It was very amusing. Indeed, they all agreed they had a deep distrust of anyone who didn't drink.
Day five
On day five some people in the group were leaving and some more arriving - three older people from New Zealand, and an Australian and South African couple
A fellow crab
.We spent the morning at the interpretation centre and hanging around in town.
Sea lions line the town beach and pier and are so playful. They would leap out of the water and onto the lower step up from the jetty, push each other off and then turn somersaults chasing each other's tail through the water.
At night the water around the jetty is lit with green lights and you could see them perfectly.
That afternoon we went snorkeling at Ochoa Bay on the other side of San Cristobal Island. There were a few fish and stingrays around but the seal lions were stealing the show again. We had seen a sea lion holding a stick in its mouth, dropping it and swimming down to catch it so one guy tried throwing his snorkel at one to see if it would play with it. It grabbed it in its mouth and scooted to the other side of the bay. All I saw from the shore was a dark shape zipping along with a fluorescent yellow snorkel sticking up like a snorkeler. It was funny.
Another gorgeous sea lion
Day six
We arrived overnight at Espanola Island and went on land at Punta Suarez. There was a big wave break coming into the landing and sea lions were catching the wave and leaping clear of the water. They always look as though they are having so much fun.
Around this island the algae is red, not blue or green like on other islands and so the masses of marine iguanas have a red colour from their food. We saw a few swimming in and when you started looking they were everywhere.
The island was also covered in bird life, different finches, mocking birds, blue-footed boobies, nasca boobies, Galapagos eagles, swallow-tailed gulls and, most impressively, wave albatross. They nest on Espanola as it has clear flat areas for them to land on. They really are massive with huge grey feet, a pretty yellowy cream head and slender wings. Their wingspan of 2.4 metres is pretty small for an albatross but they still look pretty big. We saw one unfold his wings a couple of times before taking off.
We stopped to watch a powerful blow hole on the rough side of the island and saw half a dozen turtles floating on the surge.
We had some good snorkeling at Gardner Island and I got to see my first octopus in the wild. He was so well camouflaged it was incredible. There was quite a surge where he was so we kept being swept a few metres away and then we would have to find him again
Galapagos penguins
.Then we spent the afternoon at beautiful Gardner Bay. It is a long curving white sand beach with sea lions, of course. When we got there two pups were particularly active, leaping out of the water, and interacting quite a lot with the snorkelers who were watching.
After about half an hour one of them got tired and went up on the beach in search of mum. Even though minutes before he had been jumping 20cm clear of the water, on land he would bray, take two steps with his front flippers and then collapse down onto the sand to rest for a few minutes before repeating this behaviour.
Day seven Floreana Island
We landed at Cormorant Point, which is named after a ship that landed there not the bird. The main birds on the island, living around the toxic-smelling inner lagoon, are flamingos. They were an amazing neon orange-pink colour from the shrimps they eat which become pink from the algae they eat.
We then went for a snorkel at Devil's Crown that is a water-filled volcanic crater
Overlooking the lava formations
. The marine life was the same as we had seen before but we did watch a marine iguana eating algae off the cliff side, at one point hanging on with just the claws of his right front foot as a wave crashed over him.We then went into Post Office Bay on Floreana Island. It's the island closest to the mainland and a tradition developed that before fisherman and other explorers left the Galapagos Islands they would stop off and pick up any letters addressed for their destination country, and mail it when they got there. The tradition remains for tourists, so our group left some postcards and picked some up to send once back in our respective countries.
After that we walked past the remains of a failed Norwegian fish factory to the entrance to a lava tunnel, formed three million years ago when the island was erupting and the lava set around the outside while the inside kept flowing. It was amazingly cavernous inside and had sea access at one end.
We then donned our flippers and mask for our last snorkeling session. One girl really wanted to swim with sea turtles so we went into the water joking we would definitely see them. And we did
Sea turtle takes a breath
. There were at least three in the bay and we followed one right across it. He could have swam anywhere and we would have followed. He was almost a metre long, a green back turtle, and didn't seem at all bothered that he was being tailgated by half a dozen of us, flapping his huge front flippers at a very leisurely pace. I was swimming right above him when he came up for air, poking his yellow head up for a moment. It was a great experience.We moved back to the main harbour on Santa Cruz and while the crew had operated the boat flawlessly for the previous seven days, things started going to pieces (literally) with glasses smashing and another boat ramming into us in the morning and splitting the hand rail. The Captain was a jolly man who stood with the hose ready whenever we came back from anywhere with sand to avoid it getting on board, but when another boat had taken our mooring and the crew weren't operating the anchor right, he became a very scary man.
Day eight
This was the departure day but in the morning we went to the Charles Darwin research centre to see the giant tortoises. They have a breeding programme where they collect and incubate the eggs and then the tortoises live in the centre until they are five years old (about 20cm long) when they can be reintroduced onto their native island
The cactus tree arch
. We saw the large differences between the saddle back and dome shelled tortoises, the latter are much larger and the saddle back shells do look like saddles. Our guide told us the name Galapagos came first from gallop, but that sees unlikely to me. Mark said he had read that Galapagos means shield in Spanish and the turtle shells do look like shields.
They had some there that were over 150 years old and their skin was so old and wrinkled looking. We watched them eating their breakfast of unappetising soggy leaves.
So, that was our Galapagos trip. Was it worth the money? Personally, I don't think so, though it was fabulous. It is such a lot of money and I am very conscious of how far that money would take us on ordinary travel. If I had had a better paying job (or a job to go back to) I might feel differently. Still, we are lucky that we got to visit.
The Galapagos Islands are hit by tropical and cold currents which means they have both tropical and cold-water species. A lot of the animals we saw there we had seen before (for Mark especially) though not all in the same place. Of course the giant tortoises and marine iguanas are unique to Galapagos and the volcanic activity has made some of the islands very different from the others.
We were pleased we had opted for eight days as it felt like a long time and long enough. Also, airfares and paying the park fee are the biggest expenses, so it is good to get your money's worth.
We had some delays getting the plane but were chuffed to see an iguana on the run way to see us off...
