Category Archives: Galapagos

Sea Lions

Playa Mann, Porto Baquerizo Moreno, San Cristobal

If you dream to swim with sea lions it is not necessary to get on expensive cruises that will promise elusive results. You just have to grab your bathing suit and a towel and place it on Playa Mann in Porto Baquerzio Moreno, San Cristobal and get into the ocean. The entire beach is covered by sea lions (without towels and bathing suits) that would make you feel like an intruder. So here you are, just go in the ocean and the sea lions will frolic around you doing their own sea lion business.

It is a treat to watch these animals. It seems that they sleep a lot and when not, they fight, sometimes viciously, or vocalize and grunt, cubs looking for milk from their mothers or fighting for a place more comfortable. They sleep unperturbed taking over city benches where you can listen to their calm snoring. The city is theirs In spite of a large human population that try to cope with the situation.

A nice break from the sea lions is a hike to a nice hill near the Centro de Interpretacion, a bit of a walk from the city center. The hike goes to a beach full also with sea lions at Porto Carola and from there winds its way to several nivce observation points getting to the hike towards the top of the hill. From there you can see the town and the gulf all the wall to the island if Leon Dormindo named also Kicjeker Rock a good place for snorkeling and diving.

Playade los Marinos, Porto Baquerizo Moreno, San Cristobal

But you will not escape easily the sea lions that snore on a beach right in the middle of town that is exclusively for them. There is no entrance to beach, just a relatively tall fence behind which is a world in itself unimagined outside of a zoo.

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Isla Lobos

Isla Lobos, a small islet off San Cristobal proved to be a treat at sunrise. The sea lions – lobos – were waking up with grunts and huffs and the beaches looked primeval with these huge animals lit by the morning sun.

Blue-footed booby posing, Isla Lobos, Galapagos

The island has a short hiking path between two dry landing sites. It was occupied by lots of blue-footed boobies hissing to us to find an alternate walk and not step near their chicks or the nesting boobies that were smack in the middle of the small path. We did our best and skipped rocks to avoid them, but they were everywhere, so in the end, they adopted us and were less shy. We even witnessed a blue-footed boobies courtship where the male after a long dance looks for and eventually offers a small stone to the female. She accepted… and the rest is history.

Besides the boobies, colonies of frigates were nesting on the path and were flying above us covering the entire sky in their elegantly spanned wings. You could see the males flying with the inflated red balloon and circling to land near the nest. The sky was a spectacle that we could watch mesmerized for hours.

Isla Lobos was the last site we visited with the cruise boat that dropped us later in Porto Baquerizo Moreno harbor. We Parted with the crew and our great guide Cristian and started to explore the island. Laguna El Junco is a crater lake near Puerto Baquerizo Moreno in San Cristobal. It was formed in the caldera of a volcano supposed to exist since the ice ages. It is fed only by rainwater that happens almost every day in the highland. There is a nice but muddy walk around the caldera.

La Galapaguera Tortoise Habitat, St Cristobal, Galapagos

La Galapaguera Tortoise Habitat is a park for tortoises founded in 2003 and for sure is the best place to visit in San Cristobal. The tortugas are free to roam in a natural habitat and they are not fenced in any way. The visitors can see the tortoises very close and get very personal with them. They are walking on or very close to the main path and they may fight or mate right under your eyes. This tortoises place was way better than what we visited on the island of Santa Cruz and is also one of the more popular San Cristobal attractions.

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Albatrosses

Marine Iguanas in the morning, Punta Suarez, Espanola, Galapagos

When you walk off the boat on Espanola Island you find yourself on a beach surrounded by sea lions with cute cubs. The cubs do their best to sneak away from their mother and dive into the ocean for a morning bath. You could spend hours watching them frolicking but your eyes may veer after a while towards a large colony of marine iguanas basking in the sun. During their night sleep their body temperature is getting lower and now in the South Pacific sun they heat up. To get even more heat they raise their bodies looking like tiny charging dinosaurs and they stay like this still as a rock.

You can find them everywhere you go but are spectacularly spread on the shore in striking contrast with the white rocks. Near them blue footed boobies tending their chicks unbothered by our inquisitive looks.

Blue-footed boobies, Punta Suarez, Espanola, Galapagos

Espanola coast is spectacular. The southernmost of the Galapagos Islands Espanola is also one of the oldest islands. It was formed by a volcano with a single caldera in its center. Espanola moves with the entire archipelago every year with about 2 cm pushed by the volcanos’ eruptions from the bottom of the ocean west of Fernandina.

But what is probably the most interesting thing in Espanola are the large colonies of albatrosses. The waved albatross is the largest bird that lives in the Galapagos Islands. It has a wingspan that can reach up to 8 feet. They are heavy birds and because of this they have to run a bit if they take off from the ground. The same must be said about their landing that seems a bit clumsy. So because of their size, they try to run up to the edge of the cliff and jump from there into the abyss carried by the currents that propel them upward. The edge of the cliff is like an airport from where you could see them taking off or landing with the frequency of the planes. However in comparison with other albatrosses, the Galapagos one is considered of medium size.

Albatrosses airport, Punta Suarez, Espanola, Galapagos

The Galapagos albatross engages in a quite elaborate courtship. It seems from afar like a dance that involves a lot of bill-circling between the two birds that sit face to face. During that time they also clack their bills and make some other sounds. But once an albatross has selected a partner, they will mate for life until one of them dies.

The birds lay nests on the ground in lava areas with rocks and less vegetation. They push the eggs with their bill toward the nest location where they will be incubated between April and July. Occasionally you may see abandoned eggs that stayed way too long in the sun to be able to hatch. After hatching, the chicks are kept together in nurseries and are ready to leave the colony by the end of the year and it is believed that they spend about six years out at sea before returning to mate.

Sea Lions on Bahia Gardner, Espanola, Galapagos

Selected as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, Bahia Gardiner is a place where sea lions and people bathe happiliy together. The sea lions bored by all days sitting around with no iPhones in their fins come and join the travelers that land on the beach and hang out with them. The very fine white sand invites you for a meditative walk between the green of the nearby forest and the turquoise of the ocean.

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Swimming with giant turtles

The story of the first settlers in Floreana is mind-boggling. There is always the dream of living in an unspoiled land, of escaping the conformity of bourgeois life, the banality of society, and looking for a paradise of sorts. That paradise for sure looked way better imagined from 1930s Germany than when they arrived. But living in Nietzsche’s philosophy was the goal of Dr. Ritter’s life and together with his partner Dora Strauch they landed in Floreana starting their fight with the untamed nature of the island. However after a short while their paradise was shattered by the arrival of another German couple followed soon by a glamorous German “baroness” accompanied by two lovers. The drama that unfolded that ended with several mysterious deaths in Floreana is probably worth an entire TV series. But it was made actually into the 2014 documentary “Galapagos Affair: Satan came to Eden” based on one of the books written about those events.

Post Office Bay in Floreana is an ingenious and unique postal service in the world. With no employees, no stamps and no building Post Office Bay Galapagos is a place where old school communications rules. It was setup in a point in the Pacific where sailors knew that ships would frequently pass through: the Galapagos Islands.

Back at the end of the 18th century British whalers sailed these waters spending years at sea while hunting whales to turn into valuable oil. They were lonely and always thinking of what happens with their loved ones at home. So they figured out an ingenious way of communicating. In 1793 some sailors left a wooden whiskey barrel on Floreana Island. Any passing sailor would drop a letter in the barrel, but he also had to check if there were letters that he could deliver himself when he returned home. It was a very slow mailing system but it worked for centuries. And it works even now when travelers leave postcards in the barrel but also check the several piles of mail to take the ones close to home and hand deliver to the destination. We played ourselves the game and now we have to hand deliver postcards in two countries!

Swimming with the giant turtles, Galapagos

Swimming with giant tortoises was an experience that I will never forget. These huge animals move so gently, slowly, like in a meditative dance. My swimming with the giant tortoises was not planned. I was supposed to join the group from the boat that left to snorkel further from the shore. Till I got settled with my snorkeling gear they already left and I decided not to follow them and snorkel closer near some rocks. These footage/pictures were taken with the GoPro by my son who left to snorkel with the group. So I had no camera with me when I saw my tortuga. The water was no more than 3 feet deep and she was swimming slowly almost like moving with the current.

I joined her in her swim and to my surprise she did not go away. I was right near her at an arm length, both swimming, she naturally, me clumsily with my weird contraption on the face and unnatural fins on my feet. I touched her shell that made her come even closer. She went to the bottom to eat something and came back to me. She casually looked at me almost like saying: “You see, you can do it. It’s easy. Come with me”. If I moved a bit away she came towards me and we continued swimming while she was eating occasionally from the bottom of the ocean. I felt an incredible sensation during this time, a bond that I never felt before. In a way I felt that there was no boundary between us in terms of species a thing that only Galapagos can bring to you.

Ours was not a swim but a very slowly paced dance, a meditation, an eerie awareness. We continued our unearthly moves for more than half an hour in which time we were always just at arm length of each other. I felt that I never wanted this to end like when you are in a beautiful flying dream but abruptly my reverie was interrupted by the calls from the beach. It was the snorkeling party just returned from their tour wanting to tell me about their swim with a giant turtle. Sometimes I think that I dreamed all this if I did not have the pictures of some other non-snorkeling travelers who were on the beach at the time and quite close to me and my tortoise.

Stingrays, Punta Cormoran, Floreana, Galapagos

Still under my spell from the swim with the giant tortoise, after lunch I walked on Punta Cormoran beach where stingrays enjoyed being taken by the shore waves and herons flew calmly around tortoises nests. The entire beach was covered by them, huge holes in the sand where the tortoises place their eggs, cover them with sand and leave them there to hatch by themselves. They lay between 2 and 16 eggs that hatch after about 4 months.

Heron, Punta Cormoran, Floreana, Galapagos

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Tortoises

Charles Darwin Research Station, Santa Cruz, Galapagos

Like the iguanas, the famous Galapagos tortoise population of the archipelago diminished considerably in the last century. Pirates in hideouts and others who made the island their home reported the excellent taste of the turtles’ meat that made them a target.

At Charles Darwin Research Station in Porto Ayora on the island of Santa Cruz, there is a program running now for several decades that helps breed turtles that will be eventually released in the wild. There are a number of fenced areas that have turtles hatched from eggs originating from various islands of the archipelago. Based on the previous studies the turtle species are different from island to island. The intention is to create turtles that have the DNA of the turtles from specific islands of the archipelago. Their shells also vary in size and shape with the islands. The rings on the shell may tell the age but for very old tortoises the shell becomes ringless. They are marked with a specific color that designates the island code and they have a number. On a label outside the area is written the island and the birth year of the turtles. The researchers try to breed and later release them to populate that specific island.

The Spanish word for a tortoise is “galapago”. However, for some reason, Ecuador’s official name for this group of islands is Columbus Archipelago. The tortoises are endemic to the archipelago and there are only about 15000 of them left across all islands. The estimate is that originally there were a quarter million giant tortoises all living a peaceful and long life in what originally was known as the Enchanted Islands.

At several highland farms, the tortoises are living in the wild. They were brought there by the Galapagos park administration who manages the population and areleft to roam freely in lagoons, marshes, and forests. The farm is surrounded by a fence to separate it from other farms but the fence is lifted slightly for the ground to permit the movement of the turtles.

However, the farmers figured out that tending to the tortoises is way more lucrative than the hard work involved in farming. So they gave up farming and completely converted their farms into touristic attractions and groups from the cruise boats visit daily to see the turtles roaming in the wild. On the property, there are also lava tunnels fitted with interior lighting that can be visited.

The tortoises live at least 100 years and some of them are estimated to have lived 175 years, the longest living vertebrate. The oldest tortoise in Galapagos who made the news was LonesomeGeorge who passed away in 2012 and is embalmed at Charles Darwin Station in Porto Ayoro. So the tortoises that are now bred at Charles Darwin Station In Porto Ayora will outlive not only all researchers but also their children. And maybe their grandchildren will be able to tell how long these gigantic creatures actually lived.

Fish Market, Porto Ayora, Santa Cruz, Galapagos

But the most amusing thing in Porto Ayora is not related to the tortoises. If you visit the tiny fish market, right off a small harbor, the cats and dogs begging for food in any markets of the world are replaced here by a flock of pelicans and one begging sea lion looking exactly like a dog with fins, all staying there for hours hoping for a morsel of fish.

Sunset in Porto Ayora, Santa Cruz, Galapagos

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Iguanas

Blue-footed Boobies in Black Turtle Cove, Santa Cruz, Galapagos

One of the most pleasant trips in the Galapagos is the foray into the wild by pangas, the 8-person dinghies attached to the main boat. Black Turtle Cove in Santa Cruz with its intricate labyrinth of mangroves home to colorful fish, reef sharks, turtles, and stingrays is no exception.

Golden Rays in Black Turtle Cove, Santa Cruz, Galapagos

The pangas turn off the engines and glide quietly in this cove advancing slowly pushed by an oar. And the quietude pays off because the marine life comes to the boats or swims around unbothered by the presence. Golden stingrays glide in silence and mystery like a fleet of UFOs passing impassable under the pangas followed by the camera lens.

At the base of the mangroves, reef sharks swarm in abundance finding refuge from their bigger brothers who might eat them if they had the chance.

Tortoises come out for air and dive deep into schools of fish that swim calmly in all directions. The dense mangroves create a water labyrinth in which pangas navigate with great care avoiding low branches or tree trunks and shallow water. Everywhere around us the mangrove forest beams with life.

Flamingo, Cerro Dragon, Santa Cruz, Galapagos

After some snorkeling, it came the time of the iguanas. Cerro Dragon, the Dragon Hill, is obviously named by their primeval residents who seem to be pulled out from prehistory books. But first a lagoon with flamingos that reflect their image in the shimmering water digging for shrimps moving their legs in a continuous dance movement. The shrimps they eat gives them their pink color. When in captivity in a zoo the shrimp was replaced with some other food all flamingos became white.

Marine Iguanas, Cerro Dragon, Santa Cruz, Galapagos

Godzilla-looking marine iguanas live close to the water. They lay flat on the rocks and on the ground looking almost dead. They watch you with their dark eyes but they don’t move when people pass by. They are called also saltwater iguanas, sea iguanas, or Galapagos marine iguanas and are endemic to the archipelago. They sleep on land but are the only lizard on earth that spend a part of the day in the water eating algae from the ocean. They are widespread on all islands and are one of the first presence of endemic beings that you may encounter in the archipelago.

Land Iguanas, Cerro Dragon, Santa Cruz, Galapagos

In comparison, land iguanas – there are three species of them – are harder to see and this is why Cerro Dragon is special. If you walk the two-hour path on Santa Cruz island they just pop out from the bush, shyer than their marine friends, quite large and with various colors from brown to green to orange with a tint of pink. The land iguanas are also endemic to the islands.

Their main predators are the domestic animals, mainly cats, dogs, pigs, and goats which almost eradicated the iguana population when they were introduced. The park administration started a program of eliminating these animals by shooting them from helicopters and repopulating the islands with land iguanas. Even nowadays cruise ship sailors go to the island and catch goats, kill them and serve them for dinner to their passengers. Even if this practice is not authorized the park administration turns a blind eye because the sailors are doing practically their conservation work of warding Galapagos of introduced species.

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Lava Penguins

Penguins at Sullivan Bay, Bartolome Island, Galapagos

If there were not for the penguins Bartolome Island may be considered lifeless from a visitor’s perspective. No birds or sea lions could be seen around the island. The penguins live in the caves dug on a rocky coast of Sullivan Bay. Their current population is about 2,000.

Sullivan Bay, Bartolome Island, Galapagos

The Galapagos penguins are closely related to the Humboldt and Magellanic penguins and they live in the caves and crevices of the coastal lava. Under water they reach speeds of up to 35 km per hour when going for fish. Galapagos penguins mate for life. The female lay between one and two eggs which are incubated for 35-40 days.

The island is dominated by a volcanic peak that in a past eruption covered the island in tuff, a very frail ash that is easily eroded. The peak can be easily climbed and from its top you get the iconic Galapagos panorama of the Sullivan Bay, the Pinnacle Rock and Santiago Island in the front.

On top of the volcano, Bartolome Island, Galapagos

Across Sullivan Bay you land on Isla Santiago, a place where volcanos were active 100 years ago. These volcanos spewed lava that covered its slopes flowing into the ocean. On the extensive lava fields the park rangers marked a 3.5 hours hiking path, way too long for the time restrictions the park imposed. Boats are allowed to be in the park’s land only 3 hours in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. The rest of the hours all visitors must be on the boats. The formations are spectacular with ropes of molting lava arrested in their advance, creating amazing patterns named pahoehoe, an indication that the language of the place may have been related to the one in Hawaii.

From Santiago Island the desolate landscape of the Bartolome island with its Pinnacle Rock is even more obvious. Pelicans follow the sea lions who are hunting in shallow waters right by the beach while marine iguanas stay frozen blending totally in the lava like transported from the primeval time of the dinosaurs.

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Birds’ paradise

If birds dream of a bird’s paradise this would have been one island in Galapagos. Zillion of birds are in the air at one moment in the Genovesa Island. The island named originally Tower Island by the British privateers is the breeding ground for the red footed boobies, the most populous bird in Galapagos but one that lives only on this island.

Besides them the Nazca boobies walk peacefully the island’s path curious about the two-footed intruders with cameras. This Nazca booby was so curious that accompanied us more than 100 meters in our walk and only because we moved at one point way faster he gave up and remained behind.

At Darwin Bay the red footed boobies and the frigate birds nest right by the path and feel at ease with our 16 people group passing by. No bird ever flew away or even moved away cautiously. Sometime they even left they offspring unattended while they went fishing. None of these birds have nostrils in the beak helping them when they dive into the water to catch fish.

The coast of Darwin Bay is filled by black dots in flight crisscrossing the sky. Red Footed boobies, storm petrels, finches and mocking birds, flock of dashing dots confusing your sight. Among all the elegant frigate birds open their elegant wings to a shape that no other birds can show displaying in flight or land their red balloon looking for a mate.

Philip’s Steps at Darwin Bay, Genovesa Island, Galapagos

Darwin Bay is accessed by Philip’s Steps, a ladder that climbs to the caldera’s rim. From there the pangas helped us explore the rocks where sea lions were bathing in the sun and turtle swam.

In El Barranco the frigate birds nest near the beach as far as you could see. The males pump up their red ballon ready to mate and sit triumphantly on the nest taking care of the offsprings while the female is gone fishing.

Sea lions took over the beaches, dozing a lot if they are not quarreling, fighting or babies trying to suckle to the annoyance of their mother sea lion. Many times the mother sea lions refuses to let the cub suckle wanting for him to go fishing. But the cub prefers the comfort and after a lot of grunting, yelling and even fin-slapping she would give in.

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Baltra

The Avianca flight landed in Baltra, a small island off Santa Cruz. The island has one of the two airports in the archipelago, the other being St. Cristobal Island. Usually the cruises start from one of these two islands and end in the other.

Baltra was for a short while an American navy concession. Afraid of the possible attacks in the Pacific following Pearl Harbor, the Americans were interested to settle a military base in the Galapagos. Ecuador did not endear this idea but changed its mind after a visit of President Roosevelt. Engineers from the Panama Canal started to come in the island in 1942 and in several months they built an entire city of prefab buildings with a runaway converted in today’s airport. However nothing happened in that part of the world during the war and Americans got bored on the island returning it to Ecuador in 1946. They took all the military equipment but left behind all civilian infrastructure as a gift to the locals. That included all prefab houses that were swiftly disassembled by locals and moved to various other islands of the archipelago, some being in use even today.

Old Water barges buried in the sand on Baccha Beach

Another American legacy were the old barges used to store potable water. They were very large enclosures divided in several compartments. Storms unmoored the barges and waves pushed them to a beach where they got covered almost completely by sand. The locals named the beach Baccha … because they could not pronounce the word barges.

In the night the pelicans hang out on the suspended “pangas”, the fast motorboats of the cruises, watching for fish. They dashed in the water for the unlucky fish just to be stalked by sharks that could be seen lurking in the deep lit by the light coming from the boat. The sharks try to go after the pelican and bite his feet but always the pelican is faster and move out in the last moment. If they fail to bite the pelican the sharks try with the flying fish, unexpected dash of silver flying desperately on top of the water to escape the predator.

When the boat start moving the show is over. No more pelicans, sharks or any fish can be seen. Just an expanse of zillion stars in a world with no specular lights.

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Protests

The plane tickets were purchased. Rain jackets, boots, large backpacks, all were ready for the planned hikes in the Andes. Everything was timed around Inti Ramye, the Inca solstice fiesta, celebrated in the entire Mundo Andino. Many years ago when we traveled to Peru we missed just by a couple of days the famous celebrations that happen yearly in Sachsayhuaman, the mountain top Inca citadel overlooking Cusco, the old Inca capital. But now we had everything planned to nail the celebrations in Ecuador.

And only three days before our departure all hell turned loose. The indigenous protests that simmered in the past year exploded just several days before. Marches and riots entrapped the entire country’s highlands. The protesters organized by the powerful indigenous syndicate CONAIE closed most of the roads. Its leader, Leonidas Iza, was arrested and swiftly released under street pressure and all three districts around Quito were completely paralyzed. Roads barricaded, stores closed, police making arrests, burning tires on the roads and life of thousands placed on a temporary hold. Meanwhile the Quito government and the president moved to Guayaquil. Our contact Carlos in Quito kept updating us on the fluid situation but nothing looked good. He tried to bring some travelers to Otavalo but could not go too far and had to return to the capital.

The protest started on June 13 and right after we bought the tickets the government declared on June 18 a state of emergency. We were advised to cancel our travels and it seemed that this may have been the reasonable thing to do but some of our flights were not cancelable.

I knew about a site galapagoslastminutes.com that sold boat cruises to Galapagos Archipelago, a two hours flight from Guayaquil. These were the islands where Darwin came up to do his research that introduced the revolutionary concept of evolution of the species.

On June 21 we canceled all flights that could be cancelable, bought other needed flight legs, paid for an 8-day cruise to Galapagos, changed our boots and raingear for bathing suits and on June 24 we landed late evening in Guayaquil, close to the Ecuadorian coast of the Pacific spared till then by protests but ready to face them if needed.

I never thought that using that site would ever come up exactly as they state in its name: last minute.

Police ready to quell the protests near Parque Centenario, Guayaquil, Ecuador

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Roaming the world

FLYING MONK

Category Archives: Galapagos

Sea Lions

Isla Lobos

Albatrosses

Swimming with giant turtles

Tortoises

Iguanas

Lava Penguins

Birds’ paradise

Baltra

Protests