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!

Punta Egas/Is. Santiago

Yes, I am fabulous.

 Today we hiked among the beautiful tidepools at Punta Egas on Is. Santiago. Plenty of Galapagos doves, finches, hawks, marine iguanas and sea lions, plus a colony of fur seals--many fewer in number than the omnipresent sea lions (the Galapagans call sea lions "sea dogs" and the fur seals "sea wolves"). The vegetation is more lush, at least for the Galapagos. A family that mined salt once lived on the bluff overlooking the sea, and the shell of their home remains; the crews from three tourist ships met in the field behind the house for a game of futball while we attempted to snorkel in the murky waters. 

One female sea lion came ashore to pose and preen for us, and when she tired of her game, fell asleep where she lay on the warm black sand beach.

After a short cruise north to Buccaneer's Cove (not much to see there), we motored to Playa Espumilla--aptly named, as the beach was as foamy as an over-soaped washing machine. The break was so shallow and close to the beach we had to jump in up to our necks and swim ashore through the breakers. Fabrizio said a panga overturned here before, so now they don't try to land on the beach itself. Playa Espumilla was stunning: at least a mile long with white-beige sand. It was dotted with a scattering of bright orange ghost crabs, who would scurry rapidly en masse into their little beach holes whenever we approached. These are the crabs Sponge Bob Squarepants--star of stage and screen--made famous, and can they move! We walked up the beach and saw a sad sight--a number of turtle egg nests that had been destroyed by the waves and sun. The eggs were exposed and dead--life is not easy here.

 

Several of us tried to swim in the surf to cool off--fighting that break was an effort, and at least one of our party got swamped. Getting back in the pangas took some timing. I got my first sunburn today, falling asleep on the sun deck after fighting the waves. Fabrizio tried to body-surf, and like the rest of us, ended up with a pants-full of black sand. I don't envy the crewmember who has to clean up the showers tomorrow.

Some days the crew is very attentive to my dairy allergy, other days, not so much. Today was one of those, when they could just about conceal their annoyance. I don't know whether the cook didn't have enough warning before he had to shop for the trip, or, in spite of the boat owner's efforts to inquire about food allergies and preferences, they really don't care. All that aside, the cook was a genius at salads and vegetables, and I feel the crew really made an effort to make us comfortable. Special thanks to Carlos, the panga expert, for getting us out of a potentially bad situation at Bahia Urbina. It's customary to leave tips for the crew and guide--they deserve it.

Tonight is my last night--tomorrow we go to the Darwin Research Station and breeding center outside Punta Ayora (the big city hereabouts) before boarding a bus to Baltra for the plane.

Shipwreck!..Well, almost.

A bit of excitement this morning as we brought the panga to the shore of the lava fields at Bahia Urbina on Is. Isabela: the boat was nearly swamped by a big sneaker wave. We were upended from the rear of the boat, and I wasn't sure we could turn the boat in time to face the rest of the incoming swells. If we didn't, all eight of us would have been dumped into the bay to face heavy breakers and shallow rocks. We just made it, and flew, face up over four more incoming giant swells. When we we're able to turn the boat and head for shore, we scrambled up a wet lava face, then took a precarious mile-long walk over an extensive lava field. 

The field, covered with pa hoe'hoe (ropy) lava mixed with the broken, treacherous a'a lava was the product of three huge surrounding volcanoes. I had to pay a lot of attention to where I was walking. We passed a couple of brackish ponds with turtles and rays, and ended up at a pond to visit three feeding flamingos. I passed on the morning snorkel--another rough and murky sea. The sundeck, with its cool breezes and beautiful views is the place for me. The group that went out came back in about 30 minutes--conditions were as bad as predicted.

palos santos trees over Darwin Lake

 After lunch, we motored to another spot on Isabela--Punta Tagus. After viewing graffiti from the 1800s and a scramble up a rock face that smelled of eons of bird poop, we climbed 100 steps and hiked up the hill to an overlook of Darwin Lake--as salty and lifeless as the Dead Sea. There's a lot more vegetation here, though, because this part of the island was covered in ash rather than lava after the most recent eruption. The palos santos trees, dormant until the rains, bloom in tiny yellowish flowers, and bleed a red sap that smells like a sweet incense, hence the name "holy tree". Normally in bloom this time of year, the trees remain dormant due to lack of rain--global warming is having a major effect here. 

The calm before the storm

On the way back down, as we descended the stairs, a large bull seal blocked the path to the panga; he was defending his female and pup that were lounging about on the shore. Fabrizio clapped his hands, and the bull charged. Our guide wisely backed up. By the third try, the bull must have felt he got his point across, and the little family took to the water.

Fabrizio told us that of the 32,000 inhabitants on the Galapagos islands, 10,000 are illegal, that is, people who are not born on the islands, part-time residents who make money from tourism and spend it on the mainland. Tourism has been a mixed blessing, bringing jobs, higher prices, too many people, too many cars. Water is a perennial problem, as there are no water sources other than rain, and almost everything is brought in from the Ecuadorian coast. Big foreign corporations control a lot of what goes down here politically, and they're also responsible for the big cruise ships that frequent the islands, but take the money to Ecuador or beyond instead of enriching the local economy.

Several of us recorded the ship's instruments as they went to zero tonight, indicating our arrival at the equator (again--we passed it in the middle of the night on the way in).  See the video at vimeo.com/joanneorionmiller