The Galapagos

After awakening from my robbery in Guiayaquil, and having two frustrating days for buying a digital camera, I flew to the Galapagos where I spent a wonderful three weeks in paradise. First I spent a few days on the isles of Santa Cruz and Isabela, after that I made a cruise of a week, and ended another week spending my time on San Christobal and Santa Cruz. Sadly I had to go back to the mainland and on 14 November I flew to Quito.


Route

When I was young I got Walt Disney’s Wonders of Evolution and since then the Galapagos isles are certainly one of my childhood dreams.


Map of the galapagos

Although I don’t remember much, I still can recall the pictures of Iguanas, diabolical monsters that look like they were created by Jeroen Bosch.


Diabolical creature

I never imagined going to this place, but now I’m here lying on a beach (La Loberia on San Christobal) surrounded by sea lions,


Sleeping with sea lions

animals that you can see on all islands in the most strangest places, leading a comfortable life most of the time sunbathing on beaches, benches or boats.


Snoring monster

The Galapagos were discovered in 1535 by Tomas de Berlanga, a bishop who was travelling from Panama to South America, when because lack of wind their boat drifted on the currents to the isles. Since then the isles were used and exploited by whalers, buccaneers and pirates. Especially the big tortoises were killed in large amounts because their tasty meat and there very fine oil. In 1832 Ecuador took possession of the isles.

In 1835 the isles were visited by Charles Darwin and many of his observations here led to the Evolution Theory. You can read his personal description of the Galapagos in the “Voyage of the Beagle”, an excellent travel book, which shows Darwin as a very know ledged naturalist and an sharp and intelligent observer. Most famous are the Darwin Finches. These are tiny little birds with little color and short tails. There are 13 different species and the biggest variation is in their beaks, all adapted to a different kind of food.. although not very handsome, they are fun to watch, because they are extremely tame. Since I’m lying here on the beach several came to visit me and got as close as 10 centimetre. Sometimes they don’t mind to sit on your knee or rob food from your plate.


Tame Darwin Finch

In 1936 the Galapagos were made National Park. In 1958 this was further extended.

My favourite animals here are the sea lions. You can find them everywhere and they don’t fear humans.


Enjoying life in all possible positions 1

Sometimes they are very curious, especially the young and then they like to examine you. I could spend hours watching them.


I made a friend

They enjoy life, that is easy to see when they are sleeping in all kinds of positions, or floating on their backs in the water.


Backfloater

The males behave like real males should behave!! They spend most of the time in the water making a lot of noise when they are guarding their territory by swimming along the frontiers. Whenever another male shows up he starts to make a lot of noise and hurries to chase away the intruder.


Macho Talk

They told me that a male normally occupies a territory for 12 days. In this period he hardly sleeps and doesn’t eat, he only tries to conquer (and fuck!) as many women as possible.


Lucky him

After this period he is so tired and hungry that he seeks shelter in a quiet place where he can acquire new strength. We saw one of those places on Rabida and it reminded me of an home for old folks. The atmosphere was very relaxed, animals floating on their backs in the water, far apart from each other, in what like some sort of yoga position.


Penopause lake

The females have an even more relaxed life (although the women in our group didn’t agree with this) . Most of the time they are sleeping in positions a well educated woman shouldn’t do. Shamelessly rolling over and crawling on top of each other. Most females have a lot of young and normally one every year. Although they look rather clumsy on land I was surprised how fast they are able to run, especially when a male chases a female.

In the water however they are more than excellent swimmers and they reach speeds of 65 km an hour. It is great to watch them while you are snorkelling and sometimes they come as close as 10 centimetres. One sea lion was actually looking in my snorkelling mask to see what silly/clumsy creature was on the other side.


Playing sea lions and a lost turtle

And then the most adorable creature of all, their young. It is hard to imagine that people exist who are able to kill these lovely creatures with a stick.


Adorable young

Whenever you hear them beg their mothers for milk or you see their big watery eyes you immediately melt.


Playing young

It is difficult not to cuddle and hug them or put them in your backpack and keep them in your bath tub! I easily can spend a day on the beach and watch sea lions, how different that is when lying on a beach in Zandvoort, although many people have similar rounded and flabby shapes.


Adorable young part 2

The first days I stay on Santa Cruz in the main town Puerto Ayora where ca. 10000 people are living. Immediately you can notice that animals don’t fear humans very much because all around P.A. they crawl, walk, fly, swim and sleep in many different places. Very amusing are the pelicans at the end of the day near the fish market. In great numbers they are waiting what falls from the tables where the fish are being cleaned. They behave very well and although very excited – their bodies trembling all the time of excitement- they wait until the fishermen throw the parts they don’t use.


Porn??


Pelicans shopping in the fish market


I told a joke!

The Galapagos are of volcanic origin and the first islands were created ca. 5 million years ago. It is situated on the Nasca plate, and the main hotspot is situated under Isabela and Fernandina Island. A few days before I went to the Galapagos the main volcano on Isabela, the Sierra Negra started to erupt, so on the second day I took the boat to Isabela in the hope of seeing it with my own eyes.

Arriving on Isabela is already exciting because the island is beautiful. Everywhere you can see black lava rocks in shallow emerald and turquoise waters and on top of the rocks you can see green mangrove trees. Some parts look like a labyrinth, and it should be a great place for snorkelling.


Mangroves on lava rocks in Isabela

Then there are some nice sandy beaches, where you can find the biggest iguanas of the Galapagos.


Isabela iguana

Isabela has one main town Puerto Villamil where ca. 5000 people are living. I stayed in the hostal San Vincente with very nice owners and even more important working hot showers!


Puerto Villamil

The next evening we took off with a group of 8 people to see the volcano live in action. The road towards the volcano climbs to 1200 metre and during the climb it started to get misty, so we all feared we wouldn’t see anything at all. This was strengthened by one man on the way back who answered on our question if he had seen anything: “more or less”.

The walk towards the rim of the crater took us 45 min. After a while we could hear rumbling and later we could see the clouds lightning up orange, because of the glowing magma. I already imagined huge lava streams, a valley on fire, blistering heat and suffocating sulphur fumes. When I got to the rim I was a little bit disappointed to see the spectacle, because far away I could see two fumaroles spitting out lava and a very thin red line indicated where the lava was flowing into the crater. It probably was ca. 3 km away from the point where we were standing. Only with a telezoom it was possible to see how impressive the spectacle really was, because the fire fountains were ca. 200 meters high, and whenever the lava felt down you could see it burst. I surely wanted to get closer, but this wasn’t allowed by the local police.


Sierra negra erupting

How lucky I really had been was shown two days later. I went on a daytrip, but when I got to the rim the spectacle was no longer there. The volcano had stopped its activities (the bastard!). All what remained were two plumes of smoke in the distance and the impressive size of the crater, which is second in size of active vulcanos in the world. It has a diameter of 10 km.


Sierra negra a few days later


Sunset on Isabela

Everywhere in the Galapagos you can see other spectacular remnants of volcanism and apart from the wildlife this alone makes a trip to the Galapagos worthwhile. One of the most stunning is the lava tunnels. On santa cruz I visited one of them close to Puerto Ayora. I was not prepared for what was to come and when we walked down the ladder suddenly I was standing in some sort of catacomb I’m used to enter while playing Doom or Diablo. This lava tunnel is ca. 500 metres long and 10 metres high. They are formed because the outer part of the magma cols off more rapid then the inner part.

I was the last in the tunnel, trying to catch its grandeur in my pictures when they turned off the light. It was completely dark and I started imagining the bus with the others had already left and that I had to find my way out of this tunnel in the complete dark. It probably would take me weeks living on salamanders and water, just like Gollem! Not a very pleasant thought, but ok I started walking while keeping contact with the right wall. After a few minutes the light went on again. Somebody had started counting!


Lavatunnels on Santa Cruz

The third example of the impressive forces of nature are the big lava fields of Sullivan close to Bartolomea, which we visited on the 6th day of the cruise I made. It was formed 100 years ago. Apart from a lost cactus there still is no vegetation on this field.


The lavafields of Sullivan

What makes it spectacular is the texture of the surface. It is like a giant sculpture created by the cooling down of lava. While one part already has coagulated (?), another part is still flowing until it can’t go no further and freezes shortly behind the first part, creating a wrinkled surface.


Frozen patterns


Details

Here and there you can find small not working chimneys that were once emitting gases and water vapours.


Fumarole

Around this lava field you can see many (extinct?) volcano’s and the landscape shows varying colours. Enough material here for some nice pictures (and paintings!).


The wonderful colours of Sullivan


Lavafield2


Oystercatcher on lavafields


Leaving Sullivan

I stayed a few days on Isabela where I met Riok, a Dutch woman who is staying on the Galapagos, because her husband is making a documentary for the BBC on the Galapagos. I couldn’t help feeling a bit jealous about this.

The next week I did a tour around different isles. I booked the tour in Puerto Ayora and it was on a tourist class boat called the free Enterprise. It is much cheaper booking on the Galapagos then in Quito or Guiyaquil. In Guiyaquil they offered me a tour for 1100 dollars, in P.A. I had to pay 660 dollar which still is a lot of money when you consider the normal prices in south America. By the way somebody told me that the local people don’t see anything of this money. They work for a low salary and all the money that is earned with the tours goes to the American owners of the boats.


Free enterprise

It is probably the most expensive trip I will make during my journey, because the flight and the entrance to the Galapagos cost me another 400 dollars. So together with 20 other tourists (most of them English speaking) in the first part of the week, and 14 in the second part of the week we visited around 12 different islands, some big others small.

Allthough it is possible to do a lot of islands on your own by doing day tours from Santa Cruz, Isabela or San Cristobal, cruises bring you to nicer places and not all islands can be visited on your own. The islands we visited were surprisingly very different from each other. Different animals and different landscapes.

Plaza island for example is rather small, has a beautiful bay, a cliff coast and the red of some succulents combined with the black from the lava rocks and the turquoise from the sea and the azure from the sky give some beautiful contrasts.


Plaza island


Frigate bird near cliff on Plaza


Swallowtail on Plaza


I told again a joke, theyoung doesn't understand it


The cliffs of Plaza


Close friends

On this island you can find land iguanas. Iguanas are rather ugly animals and on most islands you can find different species.


Land iguana


Iguana's on Santa Cruz

One group of iguanas is sea animals living from sea weed, and they are thus able to swim.


Swimming iguana

They don’t look very clever, like to sunbath all day and some are well camouflaged. I almost stepped on a group lying on top of each other because I thought it were lava stones.


Camouflage

Normally you can approach them very close, again animas on the Galapagos are not afraid. They have a very uneducated habit which is that they like to cough or sneeze at each other. In the beginning I thought they had a cold, but after a while I guessed that this is a way to get rid of an excessive amount of salt sea water they ingest during eating.


Iguana from Santa Fe

The land iguana’s feed on cactus leaves. The cactuses on the Galapagos are sometimes very impressive. They are Opuntia’s and sometimes can get as big as 10 metres. They even have a wooden stem.


Iguana's practising for the olympics

Another part of the Galapagos I loved was Sombrero Chino, Sullivan (see above) and Bartolomea. In this part volcanic activity was short but very intense, so you can see many small pretty isles with many colourful views, the bay here is extremely scenic.


Near Sombrero Chino


View onPinnacle rock and Sullivan (Bartolomea)

The landscape reminded me of Riven, a graphic computer game of extreme beauty. It is hard to describe my feelings here. The islands, the sea, the animals, the nice weather, life is almost perfect here and a happy tranquillity fell upon me. Just like in Serere (Bolivia) I notice I feel the best when I’m surrounded by unspoilt nature, a lot of animals and some nice people. I don’t need more in life to feel happy.


Detail of bay


Pinnacle Rock


Bartolomea


Bartolomea2


Intermezzo


Riven sunset?

In another beautiful bay we see some sea turtles and sometimes they come very close. You can observe them quite regularly here and although they are impressive compared with the giant land tortoises they are only dwarfs.


Turtle soup

Before man discovered the Galapagos these big giants were living in large numbers here and most islands had distinct species. Nowadays the biggest individuals live in breeding centres on Isabela and the Charles Darwin centre on Santa Cruz. Were the turtles earlier killed in large amounts by profit hunters, today many by men introduced species like pigs, rats, dogs and cows compete for food or eat or destroy the nests the turtles make. Introduced plants and animals (and a growing population) are certainly one of the big threats to the uniqueness of the Galapagos.


Charles Darwin Centre

It is impressive to see a big male of 250 kilo’s speeding towards you. When he was ten metres away from me I moved out of his path, you never know if he would crush me like a leopard tank. 5 minutes later he crossed my path, moaning and cracking, yes they are not very athletic, they could use some grease to lubricate their moveable parts! They say that these giants reach ages up to 150 years. Probably they sleep 140 years of this.


Giant turtel

The breeding of turtles is one of the main research goals of the Charles Darwin Centre. Another one is to find ways to reduce the damage done by introductory species. I wouldn’t mind working here for a while.


Turtles laughing after one of my jokes

Apart from sea turtles there are many wonderful creatures in the waters around the Galapagos. Because the water is very clear it is easy to see many colourful fish and it is not very difficult to see sharks (mainly the white tipped reef shark) roaming the shallow waters in search of ignorant humans.


Shark looking for feet

During the cruise it is possible to do some snorkelling, so you can observe playing sea lions around you, eagle rays that look like flying carpets in the water, and numerous amounts of colourful fish that I’m not able to show because I lack an underwater case for my digital camera. Some had with beautiful results so in Quito I will search for one.

There were for instance some beautiful starfish with bright red dots and stripes, and it was a pleasure to see a couple of Galapagos penguins hunting in a school of thousands of tiny fish. I was surprised to see how difficult for them it was to catch one. I had thought they were living in some sort of paradise. Swim, open your mouth and voila!

The only thing that surprised me was an almost complete absence of dolphins. In the three weeks I was staying I only saw a couple near Isabela.


Galapagos penguin

Another dazzling experience was the fluorescence of algae during the night. Whenever there was turbulence in the water you could see little sparks of light. Spectacular was when a sea lion was speeding through the water. You could see it was surrounded by white light and he left a trail of light. AN INCREDIBLE SIGHT AND EVERYBODY ONE THE BOAT CHEERED.

The most beautiful island we visited on our cruise was unmistakably Española. The island is packed with animals and the views are superb. Already to get on the island you have to stumble your way through the sea lions


Espagnola

and immediately after this you encounter the most colourful iguana of the Galapagos. This ugly animal is beautiful.


Espagnola iguana 1


Front side

Then there are the numerous birds. First we see nestling Nasca Boobies, and you easily can make close up pictures of this cute animal.


Nasca boobies

Closest up

In its skull they have some sort of airbags that they need because when they hunt for fish they let themselves drop from great height into the water. They look like harpoons being shot into it.


Young parents


Nasca boobie watching the surf

Close relatives of the Nasca Boobies are the vain Blue Foot Boobies.


Blue foot boobie

As the name says they have blue feet, and I can’t stop comparing this with blue enamelled (gelakte?) moccasins (laarsjes), of which they are very proud.


Look at my blue suede shoes

Males and females both have them, so it has no sexual meaning. Somebody in my group said they have blue feet to attract fish while they are in the water. It sounds unlikely to me because they hunt like I described above.


The catwalk

Walking along Española you see a beautiful cliff coast with nestling birds and changing colours.


Espagnola cliffs


Cliffs 2

A spectacular phenomenon is the blow hole. It is a narrow crevasse in the reef and every time a big wave comes in it is being pressed through the hole, and it spits out the water like a geyser.


Blow hole

When you turn around you look in the eyes of the albatross! They are nestling here. The albatross is an impressive bird. When it flies the wings have a span of ca 3.5 metres. It is one of those animals I had hoped to see once in my life.


the albatros

Their young look like a crossing of the Beatles and a poodle, and trio sex is not only an invention of humans. All around me the young and almost full grown albatrosses are practising the mating rituals, often three birds stands close together and shake their heads and make sounds with their beaks in an attempt to impress the opposite sex. When they mate male and female stay together for the rest of their lives, unless one of them drops dead.


Albatros young

The last island of the cruise is Seymour, home to the magnificent and great frigate bird. It is mating season and the male is trying to attract females by inflating a sac under his throat and use this as a percussion instrument.


Frigate bird with throat erection

Sometimes when the red sac is not inflated it looks like this animal has its scrotum hanging under his throat!


Something in the wrong place


Frigate bird young

The frigate bird is a hunter and a pirate. It tries to steal fish from other birds and it looks for weak and sick young birds of other species.

We saw a frigate bird trying to catch a young bird that was floating in the water. He attacked the young and tried to grab the beak of the young and lift the young out of the water. This young however was already to strong and was able to free itself. Later we saw when they young bird tried to escape by flying away, the frigate bird caught the young in full flight, again trying to crush its head with its beak. Again it didn’t succeed and everybody in the boat started to applaud.


Young bird under attack

Later I could see the young again taking off, the frigate bird had left and you an only hope the young bird is old enough to feed itself. Otherwise that frigate bird will show up once again!

After the tour was ended I stayed another 6 days on the Galapagos. A few days on San Christobal in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno where about 2000 people are living.


Puerto Baquerizo Moreno

They try to attract more tourists to this island, but when I was there were not many of them. This town belongs to the sea lions. On all beaches, boats, benches and plazas you can find them, and even at night you can find them making the streets unsafe.


Sea lions nightlife

Most of the time I relaxed or made some little walks to lay on the beaches. There are some nice views from frigate bird hill, but after the dazzling experiences from the cruise, I was content with doing nothing and at times some snoring next to sea lions.


Frigate bird hill


View from frigate bird hill


San Christobal view

After two days Santa Cruz enjoying Tortuga bay, one of the most idyllic sand beaches I have ever seen, where I again encountered some hungry sharks, and drank a couple of beers with Christian Thio who I already met in Serere I ended my Galapagos experience by flying to Quito, feeling sad to leave this wonderful place.

The Galapagos, my child’s dream became true. A unique and everlasting experience. I hope you one day also may be able to visit this paradise! Love to you all.

Wim

More pictures are on

http://wimvdm.blogspot.com/2005/11/last-partof-pictures.html ENJOY!!