Last Day/Puerto Ayora

We awoke to beautiful dawn light illuminating the little town of Puerto Ayora, on the south end of Is. Santa Cruz. We said our farewells to the crew, and after a short panga ride to the dock, made our way through town to the Darwin Research Center. The center is concerned with keeping the varied species of land tortoises and iguanas from extinction; that's already happened on five of the archipelago's islands. You may have read about "Lonesome George", the last of his kind on one of the northern islands. Though he was brought to the Center and presented with a number of attractive female tortoises, he simply wasn't interested (the locals joke that he was gay. Or maybe it wasn't a joke). He died in 2012. One of the problems of attempting to interbreed animals from different islands is sterility in the offspring; even if the breeding "takes" with live young, the animals often die when they reach mating age, or they are unable to successfully reproduce. Though the islands don't seem that far apart physically, apparently the specialization that Charles Darwin noted has lasting effects.

A two-year old

The Darwin Center is a pleasant park that provides walkways threading through the grounds; we passed tortoises that were only a few inches in length to massive oldsters (they can live to be around 100 years). El Diablo, in spite of his unimpressive appearance, is the Center's champion. He mates with every female presented to him, usually successfully. What a guy!

El Diablo is very tired

We waited in town for a bus that took us through the lush, green highlands to the north part of the island; from there, a short ferry ride brought us back to Baltra and the airport. I met up once again with my Israeli friend, who stayed in Puerto Ayora the week--she had an adventure too, a mini-romance. It's a charming little town, and I could see coming directly here from Quito in the future. I suppose we both found what we were looking for.

Santa Cruz uplands

The flight back was uneventful, except for the risky choice of eating the salad served on the flight--by the time we touched down, I knew I had made a mistake. Fortunately, my armada of drugs including lomotil, tetracycline, pepto bismol tabs, and pro-biotics made for a short stint of bathroom sprints. What's traveling in South America without a little turista?

Once at the airport, I was unable to check into my next-day flights, so I took one of the airport cabs (these are marked on the side with a picture of an airplane) to my destination, the Galapagos Natural Life Hostel, which graciously gave me a free night for booking with Galapagos Last Minute. I expected it to be...a hostel. And it was. I didn't stay in the house proper, but in back, in one of the concrete block buildings that are single dwellings. Cold shower and TP-free toilet aside, it was a good overnight. I got to watch "Jennifer's Body", an old humor/horror/teenage angst DVD in English--what's not to like?

Painted on a Puerto Ayora wall...

At 4AM, my iPhone blasted out "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" as it had every morning (though usually it was at 6AM). I wandered out only to find no taxi waiting. Whoops. Again, I got lucky--the man who had booked my trip was staying at the hostel that night, visiting his mother; he woke up, turned the lights on, and called a taxi for me. Muchas Gracias again, Rodrigo! The cab driver had a religious program on the radio, and I listened to the silky voiced announcer expounding on "La luz marveloso" all the way to the airport. The "Migration" line was huge, and I was glad I gave it two hours. After one more luggage check, I took a seat in the waiting room; I was sweating it: only one flight a day from Quito to Houston, but I made it! In Houston, the thing I feared all along happened: I got bumped, and had to wait five hours for a plane to SFO. As is usual with anxiety, when the thing you fear most happens, you are relieved. I was pretty exhausted when we got into San Francisco (I had been either in an airport or some sort of moving vehicle for nearly 17 hours at that point), but the first of my adventures was a great success, and I felt elated. I even over-tipped the cab driver (I must have been tired).

Next: INDIA!