Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Galapagos 2018 - Day 16. Guayaquil

Today we are being dropped off at the airport, but before that we had a last nature walk in Seymour Norte Island. We disembarked at 6 am in an inhospitable, flat and rocky islet, where the last surprise of the trip was waiting for us. I stayed in the Fragata Hostel, and spent a week aboard the Fragata Yacht, so it was time for us to witness the courtship ritual of the Fragata bird. This bird, who is a very elegant glider, mates in February and March, but several weeks before the mating season the male makes a nest (it is the guy making the nest, so it is more a bachelor pad than an attractive home; afterward it puffs up his bright red crop and stands there looking pretty, letting the females check him up for several days. Eventually he mates with the female that chooses him, and an egg results. The chicks are of course very cute, but as soon as they hit adolescence they turn dower and morose, sink their with head within his black shoulders, hangs his long curved beak, and broods in the guano-covered nest until his parents come with food. For all practical purposes it looks like the bird of death!

The other species that is in courtship is the Pájaro Bobo, or Blue-Footed Boobie). This is where they are their goofiest, with both male and female goose-marching with their blue feet, lowering and rising their necks in unison, and playing hard to get as they stare at each other amorously with beady little eyes. I also saw a Green-Footed Boobie trying to court a Blue-Footed female, but to no avail. That is what he gets for having turned vegan.

We got to the airport around 8:30 am, said our goodbyes, and started the endless wait for our flights. I am flying to Guayaquil at 12:30 pm, and shall be there at 3:20 pm. My onward flight to Quito doesn’t start until 9 pm, so I am going to rush to the city and see what I can see in five hours. More about that later.

In a brief composite from my observations from the air plus a tour around the city in the tourist bus I can tell you that Guayaquil is a large city (the largest in Ecuador at 3.5 million inhabitants) that was founded at the shore of the Guayas river around 1548. Francisco de Orellana, the Spanish explorer who discovered the Amazon is mentioned everywhere, so I am going to guess that he was the founder. During colonial times the Royal shipyards of Guayaquil built many of the galleons that made the crossing to Philippines, and the city prospered. Now it extends as far as the eye can see from El Mirador, a 100 m high prominence (built by an endless sequence of turbidites) that dominates the city.

My tour started by the Malecón of the Guayas River, which at this point is as wide as the Amazon River is in Iquitos. The Malecón, or Boardwalk, is one of the main attractions of the city, and has been built into a beautiful park where one finds monuments to Simón Bolivar and Sucre, both of whom are the acknowledged liberators of Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela, which at some time formed the Gran Colombia that Bolivar had dreamed as the big confederation of South America. The boardwalk also has a Botanical Garden, marinas, an amusement park, and a couple of museums.

Overlooking the city are the hills of Santa Ana and El Carmen, both of which are covered by a colorful mélange of fabelas (quaint fabelas, not dangerous like the ones in Rio De Janeiro). Atop Santa Ana there is a monumental Christ that looks benevolently over the city, and atop El Carmen is a light blue lighthouse. Both of them reportedly afford great views of the city, but I didn’t have time to climb them. At the base of both hills is the Mono Machín, a 10 m high colored sculpture of a monkey, which has given Guyaquileňos their alternate appellation as “monos”.

Surprisingly, the city has two boardwalks, the second one being along the estuary of the Rio Salado. One of the banks has been handsomely developed with parks and community centers, but the opposite bank had been the traditional dwelling place of the fishermen, who still claim the area, now turned into a colorful fabela on stilts with a well-illuminated wood boardwalk.

And then there is the city itself, which is a vibrant mosaic of old qurters, parks, modern buildings, and fancy districts. Commerce is alive and well, and the old commercial center is a beehive of activity. I had a few dollars left in my pocket, and decided to stop at a bookstore to see if there was something I could blow off my cash buying. To my surprise the books were quite affordable (plus a $6 taxi from the airport, an $8 tour of the city, and a $5 dinner of empanadas Argentinas), and reminded me that Galapagos is a particularly expensive province of Ecuador.

Ecuador has treated me well, and I am very happy I came to greet my Ecuadorian brothers and sisters. It is varied and beautiful land, and I would certainly like to come back. For now it is time to put an end to this journal, as I wait for my flight first to Quito at 9:30 pm, and then to Dallas and San Francisco at midnight. Good night for now.


Finis

Galapagos 2018 - Day 15. Yate Fragata, at anchor off Santa Fe Island

Our last full day! It is a bit sad to feel we have come to an end, but on the other hand a few more days of this sloth and my brain would turn to mush. Our first activity was a 6 am walk across Point Cormorant to watch … flamingos (I know, the name suggests we could have seen cormorants, but Santa Fe is in the south, and cormorants are only seen in the west coast of Isabela). I also saw a fat, heathy rat; later I mentioned it to our guide Robert and he told me we should have stopped and killed it, for they are particularly pernicious invaders (sorry, but killing an animal was the thing farthest from my mind in eco-minded Galapagos).

The highlight of the walk was the sea turtle we found on the beach! To judge from the prints on the sand she was but one of many turtles who had dragged themselves across the beach and in to the sand dunes beyond to deposit their eggs. Our friend was not happy at being discovered and decided to turn around and crawl back to the ocean. She was slow, and crossing the 10 m that separated her from the shore took her about 10 minutes, even after she was in the water. Apparently they are heavy enough that they have to be fully submerged to take advantage of their buoyancy; once submerged, however, she swiftly moved way into the blue yonder.

Our last snorkeling of the trip was around La Corona del Diablo, and eroded volcanic plug whose jagged remnants stick out of the water has tall pillars that, just like the high points of a crown, surround a small central bay. It was a worthy last dive, even though we didn’t see any big sea life, because the whole of the submerged rocks had been colonized by a barnacle reef, which gave the submarine landscape a golden hue, where the many colors of fish and sea stars shone like jewels.

After the dive we ate lunch while in transit to the island of Santa Cruz. I had been a couple of days there, so the visit to the Darwin Research Station was a bit of a repeat, and I actually declined the suggestion of going to Rancho Chato to see the tortoises. Instead I went shopping for a “Panama” hat, which as it turns out are not manufactured in Panama but in Ecuador, where they are called “Sombreros de Paja Toquilla”. I found a perfect one in the 30% off rack of a shop, where I only paid $49 for a $70 hat. I was very happy with my purchase until Monica later expressed her opinion that it was very expensive. Bah! Women. What do they know about fine hats. 

As a sort of goodbye, the crew dressed up before dinner, and shared a cocktail and toast with us. They cut a fine figure on their dark trousers and white shirts with epaulettes. This made me think that Ecuadorians are, in general, fairly short at an average of 5 ft nothing; Victoriano, our cook, is a fine example of a small person. But there are a few who are tall; at 6 ft tall, our seaman Edison is a splendid specimen of the young and strong seafarer. Quite naturally, the rest of the crew addresses him as “Grande”, or “Grandote”, much to the amusement of our foreign visitors, who are puzzled by the tendency of Latin Americans to hang derogatory monikers on their best friends.

After the toast Roberto showed us a film he had compiled with photos and short snippets of film. It was absolutely fabulous, particularly in so far as it included some stunning submarine shots. He is a great nature photographer. Now I must make a brief advertisement on behalf of the Yacht Fragata. If you ever consider coming to Galapagos, I would strongly recommend checking their website www.FragataYatchGalapagos.com
I was highly satisfied with the ship, the food, the program, and—most importantly—the people who looked after us so well during this week. Give them a chance and they are sure to wow you as well.

Galapagos 2018 - Day 14. Yate Fragata, at sea

Today we explored Espaňola, the southernmost of the islands (also far to the east, although not as much as San Cristobal). We first disembarked in Punta Suarez, on the west side of the island, for another bird watching expedition. Of course there were a bunch of sea lions sunning on the rocky beach, but what amazed us most were hundreds of marine iguanas, laying pell-mell above each other, apparently waiting for the sun to warm them up so they could dive into the cool ocean. According to Roberto they feed from sea algae at depths of a few tens of meters. The females are small and almost black; the males, in contrast, are big and, in Espaňola in particular, are brightly colored carmine red on the sides, and beautiful turquoise green on top and bottom (they are, however, even uglier than their counterparts in the other islands).

Bird watching was fairly successful, with sightings of albatrosses (an adult in flight, and a couple of teenagers clearly planning to leave the nest at any moment now), Galapagos hawks, and finches of three different sub-species feeding in the same tree (or so claimed Catherine, who is the only one sophisticated enough to see the minor differences between the subspecies).

Once we were back on the boat we moved from the west to the east side of the island, to Gardner Bay. There we made a brave attempt to snorkel, but the swell was up and the water was too turbid to see anything more than a few fish.

I skipped the afternoon walk along the beach, plus an hour of sunbathing, and instead watched a bloody movie on board: Al Pacino’s “Hangman”. 

Monday, January 22, 2018

Galapagos 2018 - Day 13. Yate Fragata, at anchor off Cerro Brujo

It was just 5 am when the engines were started and we started sailing toward el León Dormido, a massive pillar, 50 m high, that sticks out of the ocean maybe 10 nautical miles from the coast of San Cristobal Island, and which in the distance resembles the profile of a sea lion. We were scheduled to make a dive there, at 6:15 am! None of this nonsense of sleeping late for adventurers like us, particularly because there was a small chance that we might see hammer-head sharks. Alas, it was not to be, because the water was comparatively warm, and this type of shark prefers cold water. The only thing I saw worth of notice were some tiny jelly fish with a peacock blue phosphorescence and a boring old shark, but others saw more sharks and a couple of sea turtles.

Back on the boat we had breakfast, while the boat motored toward Cerro Brujo, which forms a small peninsula off the coast of San Cristobal Island. Once there we sailed around it in the dinghy, looked at sea caves and a sea arch, and then headed for the beach for a promised “roast and swim session”. I was more interested on Cerro Brujo itself, which is formed by a rock that is massive and most definitely not basalt. On close inspection I concluded that it was an erosional remnant of a thick ignimbrite, and now that I saw it at close quarters I became convinced that it was the same rock that formed el León Dormido 15 km away. I wonder if the pyroclastic flow that formed the ignimbrite entered the sea (perhaps gliding over the sea surface?), or whether it was formed at a time during a glacial interval, when the sea level dropped enough to create a tongue 15 km long and 50 m thick, that was later eroded as sea level rose during an interglacial.

My reputation as a bird watcher is growing, as I was the only one to successfully observe, and describe, a flock of Oystercatchers looking for something to eat among the rocks.

In the afternoon we walked through Isla Lobos, another of the many islets adjacent to San Cristobal. As the name implies we saw dozens of lobos marinos (sea lions), which was not very exciting because they just lie like smelly lumps on the sand. Yes, the little ones are cute, but there are only so many cute photos you can take (never, ever, ask your friend to show you his photos of Galapagos, unless you want to spend hours looking at endless shots of sea lions). There was a redeeming moment, however, when we got to see a Piquero de Patas Azules (also called the Pájaro Bobo, Blue-Footed Boobie, or Stoepel in German) feeding its young. This bird is the symbol of the Galapagos, where one of the most popular t-shirts says “I like boobies” and the logo are two blue “feet” that manage to look like a pair of “boobies”. As the names Pájaro Bobo, Boobie, or Stoepel imply, it is a goofy-looking bird that likes to do goofy things.

Our dive this afternoon was off the coast of Isla Lobos, where the attraction is to swim amongst the sea lions. Now, that was exciting! The lumps on land become amazing contortionists and acrobats, who come straight at you only to veer off at the last moment (the mask makes all objects look closer than they are, so you have the impression that you can almost touch the gracile forms as they dart left and right around you). I got a real scare a couple of times, when one of the adult males, probably in charge of looking after the playful kids, slowly covered your whole horizon, looking for all purposes like a leviathan overseeing its dominion. One of the best dives we have had!

In the afternoon we disembarked in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, a handsome little town of 10,000 people, which also happens to be the cantonal capital of Galapagos. We had hour and a half to do whatever we wanted, although half an hour was ample time to cover the town. I reflected that I only had two more full days left in Ecuador, so for old time’s sake I dined on a delicious ceviche mixto of fish, shrimp, octopus, and cachalanga (the later is what they call chiton). Before I had said that the Ecuadorian ceviche was like the Peruvian one, but now I realize I was wrong; the Ecuadorian ceviche is soupier, with the cold broth being citrus-rich, and the seafood is cooked cooked, rather than being cooked in lime juice. It spoiled my appetite for dinner, but it sure was a delight.


As planned, after dinner on the boat we took a night ride back to town, and took over a small bar where we negotiated a bulk price of $5 per drink (I think most of us started with mojitos), and took over the pool table and the dance floor. It was a merry party, and I got to dance plenty, but I am afraid some of the modern Latin rhythms were a bit outside my repertoire. Monica, who is a petite Ecuadorian trigueňa, was in her element, and effortlessly organized the party by teaching the more adept the one-two-up step that forms the basis of bachata. Catherine and Michael once again amazed every one with their mastery of bachata and salsa, and were also actively engaged in making sure that everyone had a chance to dance and have a good time. Roberto, our guide, was also in the thick of it, totally oblivious that he is much smaller than the big German girls, whom he twirled like if they were petite debutants. Everyone had a good time!

Galapagos 2018 - Day 12. Yate Fragata, at sea

I am beginning to run out of ways to tell about our walks and dives, so maybe I will limit myself to recording the location, and mentioning a few of the unique things we saw. Early in the morning we went ashore in the Plaza Sur islet, which is separated by a narrow channel from its twin islet Plaza Norte, off the east coast of Santa Cruz. Both islets are erosional remnants of a lava field that was fed by a cinder cone on the shore of adjacent Santa Cruz. We took a walk here not because of its geologic significance, but because on the cliff that faces the open sea there are myriads of sea birds.

Before we got to the cliff, however, we saw a hybrid iguana climbing a nopal tree (yes, nopales here grow into trees, rather than clusters). This iguana, we were told, is a hybrid between a male land iguana, which are aggressive, and a female marine iguana. The hybrid is apparently sterile (?), but has adapted to feed from the pads and tunas directly from the tree, thus avoiding competition from its land or marine compadres.

Once we got to the top of the seacliff, which is a good 40 m high here, we witnessed obsessive activity on the side of the Galapagos Shearwater, which fly in big flocks that take turns to take off the cliff, swing around the ocean looking for plankton, and return to the cliff, all in a matter of less than a minute (I imagine that if they fid a patch of kreel they all dive in, but today the pickings were poor). Also present were the by now familiar Fragatas, harassing the also familiar Tropical birds, and a handful of pelicans and seagulls. Wait, what is that bird that is brown all over? I asked our bird expert Catherine, who dismissed it as yet another seagull. “But it is brown both on top and in the chest”, I remonstrated. “What?!” Aha, now I had her full attention. It turned out to be the elusive Brown Noddy! My standing in the bird watching cabal has increased a couple of notches 😊

We also so sea lions. In fact, the day could be considered sea lion-dominated. I am from California, so sea lions are a bit of old hat, but my fellow travelers had to coo and sigh at the beauty of the baby sea lions, who find in the channel between the islets a good place for Mom to bring some food.

We didn’t snorkel that morning, because we needed to sail from Santa Cruz to Santa Fe (a couple of hours), where we found ourselves a bay where we first went for a walk to see more sea lions, and later for a nice dive. I sighted three sharks sleeping at the bottom of the bay, a sea turtle also resting in the sandy bottom, and two different pairs of manta rays. Looking between the rocks I also saw the normal assortment of fish, sea urchins with fat spines (I suspect they are fat because of secondary growths). Oh wait, … wow … a veritable river of fish! They were some type of zebra fish, numbering in the thousands, that kept to a tight school that meandered along the bottom as a giant sea serpent.

From there we started sailing on a slightly choppy sea, to cross to Cristobal Island, and pretty soon three or four of our group were either puking or feeling queasy enough to skip dinner. Great. Double portions for those of us who didn’t fall sick!

After dinner the survivors met in the Grand Cabin to review the plan for tomorrow, after which our guide Roberto put some Ecuadorian music. Right away Monica started to shake, and she and Roberto gave us a nice demo of the popular dance music in Ecuador. Not to fall behind Catherine and Michael asked for a salsa, and promptly proceeded to wow everyone with their professional style of dancing. Not to be left behind, David (61 years old) asked for rock-and-roll, and she and Catherine gave a good demo on East Coast Swing. Excited about the music, the group decided that tomorrow night we will escape the boat at Puerto Baquerizo Moreno and go dancing 😊

Galapagos 2018 - Day 11. Yate Fragata, anchored off Bartolome Islet

Walk, swim, eat, sleep, repeat; walk, swim . . . Yes, it seems that we are developing quite a rhythm in this excursion. Today we admired the volcanic landscape of Bartolome Islet, which is separated from the much larger Island of Santiago by the Seymour channel. What a difference with respect to flat Genovesa! Bartolome, and the adjacent coast of Santiago, are formed by the juxtaposition of several Surtseyan tuff rings and subaerial cinder cones. Surtseyan eruptions take place when magma erupts at a depth of a few meters below the surface of the ocean; because the water pressure is low, the contact between the hot basaltic magma (1,000 to 1,200 degrees C) flashes the water into steam and causes powerful explosion jets. The explosion jets were observed for the first time in Caphelinos (Azores) in the 1950’s, and later as the new island of Surtsey (Iceland) was born in 1965 (it was then that trained volcanologists saw and described the eruption, and hence the name Surtseyan was memorialized in the scientific literature). As described, the explosion jets resembled black pine trees that grew instantaneously in all directions, only to turn white once the steam condensed into tiny droplets. The force of the explosions comminutes the magma, so the layers of tuff formed are vey fine-grained, and sometimes bear evidence of powerful lateral forces in the form of thin laminations, ripple marks, or cross bedding. As the new volcano rises from the sea the waves immediately start cutting it down, so for a while the new island struggles for survival. If it is to last it must grow fast enough to cut the connection between magma and sea water, and either coat itself with lava or at least grow into a cinder cone armored with larger volcanic bombs. Sometimes, long after the eruption has ceased, the waves manage to cut down a flank of the tuff ring, exposing the crystallized plug of the vent to form a pinnacle (which happens to be the case at Bartolome).

The fact that several Surtseyan tuff rings and Strombolian cinder cones are clustered in Bartolome and the adjacent portion of Santiago suggests to me that this was a point of active basaltic magma intrusion through the oceanic crust. However, I don’t think a magma chamber had the chance to form, so the whole ended being just a field of small monogenetic volcanoes. The bulk of Santiago, however, eventually was formed by a shield volcano, not unlike the one in Santa Cruz, and so provided me with a good example to describe the difference between monogenetic and polygenetic volcanoes.

All this I explained in fits and starts to my fellow travelers as we climbed the 350 m high tuff ring closest to the shore. On the back side we found a filed of spatter cones, formed by small central vent eruptions, which again made a textbook example of central vent versus fissure eruptions of the type we had seen in Genovesa.

From the top of the tuff ring we had a fabulous view of Bartolome, the Seymour channel, and Santiago. We could see that a very young, large lava flow had erupted in the not so distant past (1897 as it happened to be) from the flank of the Santiago shield, and had flooded the partially eroded or relatively new cinder cones and tuff rings, leaving them as “inselbergs” sticking out of a sea of black rock (I am borrowing the term inselberg from glaciology, where it is used to refer to mountain tops that stick out of an ice sheet).

To the delight of our friend Catherine, who is the avid bird watcher of our group, we sighted the Galapagos Hawk, albeit soaring high in the sky.

Our snorkeling this time was off the dinghy, following the coast. I sighted a shark, so close I could have almost touched it, a different type of isolated coral colony that looked like a stack of cereal boxes, and any number of colorful fish. Our guide saw and took a movie of a shark sleeping on the sandy bottom that was fascinating (sharks do not have a swim bladder to control their buoyancy, so they must swim continuously, or rest on the bottom while asleep).

After another delicious lunch the sip crossed Seymour channel, and our second walk of the day was a geologic walk through the 1897 lava flow. This lava flow exhibits the most beautiful gallery of ropy pahohoe (we all went nuts taking photographs of cool ropy structures), with the odd patch of aa lava in between (did you know that in Germany little kids that need to go to the bathroom are asked by their moms “Do you need to go peepee or aa?”). Gives a completely new meaning to the term aa lava!

Quite surprisingly the surface of the lava flow is practically devoid of life. I have always claimed that life, in the form of odd seeds and small reptiles, is quick to colonize new areas. I stand corrected, at least in the case of a rocky, black surface in a dry climate. Not much has gotten a foothold here in over a 100 years.

Our final dive was delightful, with sightings of two turtles, isolated coral clusters, and my first sighting of small white mollusks attached to the rocks, and some sort of yellow submarine lichen (?) that gave the jumble of rocks the aspect of a gold field.


After diving I had a delightful conversation with Catherine and her boyfriend Michael. Catherine, our bird watcher, was a professor of ornithology at State University of New York (SUNY), until she got tired of the pressure to do research and get grants, and now she works as researcher for the Swiss Research Institute. Michael is the other geologist on board. He is a petroleum geologist, specialized in field development and well completion. He was there for the heyday of the British exploration and development of their portion of the North Sea, and now seems to spend a lot of time consulting for companies doing development in the Norwegian oil fields. His guess is that the petroleum industry will not recover from the current slump (too much oil available already, plus the bad boy image of the oil industry), and that geologists would be well advised to specialize in something else. I like this couple very much.

Galapagos 2018 - Day 10. Yate Fragata, at sea

We anchored off the island of Genovesa, within Darwin Bay (the cult to Darwin is evidently strong wherever we go). The bay itself is beautiful, but the land looks totally uninspiring, as the island lacks a central mountain, being effectively a plateau covered by palo santo. This particular bush/small tree, which is also found in the coast around Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, has the peculiarity that during the hottest part of the year sheds all its leaves to avoid dehydration, so for all practical purposes the forest looks like a cluster of dead trees. Once the temperature drops the tree starts donning leaves once again and, like a miracle, the forest apparently comes back from being dead, and hence the name palo santo.

We made a dry landing early in the morning, and went for a short walk over the rocky ground, intent on seeing as many birds as we could. Yes, apparently my new friends include some avid bird watchers, who go in total rapture when they see the Small Finch (an ugly little dark gray bird) or the Red-Footed Boobie (which has webbed feet but enjoys perching on the palo santo, giving the impression that it is wearing boxing gloves). The Red-Footed Boobie makes an ugly, rickety nest, and normally sits on two eggs, although once the first chick is born he ignores the other egg, which normally fails to hatch. We actually saw some of the chicks, who look like little pillows on account of their dense white down.

The Nazca Boobie, in contrast, “nests” on the ground, on a thin collection of bits of wood I would be ashamed of calling a nest (the male makes the so-called nest, and from there whistles to attract the attention of a female who might be willing to overlook his total incompetence at building a nest).

Being one of the two geologists on board (the other one, Michael, is a petroleum geologist), I am often asked what I think about this or that. We came to a big crack that was a good 5 m deep and several meters long and the guide introduced it as a geologic fault (sure, why not?); a few hundred meters along the road; however, we came to another “crack”, but this time it bore a thin coating of shelly pahoehoe lava that draped both sides of the fissure, and irregular “turds” of lava shreds, sometimes with a late cover of shelly pahoehoe. As pretty an example of a fissure along which lava had erupted as you can hope to find. The fissure was over a 100 m long, and appeared to have three en echelon segments. I think the whole island was formed by one or more fissure eruptions, as a miniature plateau basalt, and that is why it is so flat.

Continuing with our bird watching expedition, we have seen lots of Fragata birds soaring on thermals, innocently enjoying themselves. Ah, but there is nothing of innocent in their behavior when they spot a Tropical bird coming back from a successful fishing expedition. The Fragata bird then shows his true colors as a bully, attacking the Tropical bird until the latter regurgitates its food, which the Fragata then devours with greed. When in flight Fragatas are elegant gliders, and are popular symbols of the Galapagos because during mating time the male puffs its bright red throat to attract females.

Finally, we got some sightings of the elusive Galapagos Short-Eared Owl, a small, cute, and totally ruthless little owl, who disembowels small petrels and finches with surgical precision.

After I had had my fill of bird-watching we returned to the ship, changed into swimming suits, and went for some snorkeling off the side of the cliff. It was OK, but outside of some brightly colored fish there were no significant sightings of larger animals.

True to Ecuadorian fashion we had an abundant lunch centered on a delicious stew of fish and shrimp, and took the early afternoon off to lay on deck or read during the hottest part of the day (the overall temperature is very pleasant, but the direct sun will soon drill unto your skull).

The mid-afternoon activities were a mirror image of the morning, with a short walk pajareando (this short walk took forever, particularly since I had forgotten my hat and had to use a towel to protect myself against the fierce rays of the sun, just like Lawrence of Arabia), and snorkeling off the beach afterward. Interesting to see how bigger chicks feed from their parents, sticking their whole head into their gullets. We also saw the bones of a whale, blanching in the sun, which I suspect is the Galapagos version of a Disney attraction.

Snorkeling was great, with very satisfactory sightings of three manta rays and two sharks, plus any number of beautifully colored parrot fish, and scar-face angle fish, not unlike the one in Finding Nemo. I was puzzled by the presence of bits of coral on the beach, because I had not seen any coral during the previous snorkeling trips (this kind of makes sense because the water is too cold for corals), but here I finally found the answer. There are small individual colonies of coral, dotted here and there among the blocks of lava, like if they were a large white beachball attached to the bottom.

Dinner was once again delicious (we made a point of admiring the artistry of our cook, Victoriano, in the hope that he will continue producing these masterpieces for the rest of our cruise), and after dinner we got on our way, for the transit between Genovesa and the islet of Bartolome.

Galapagos 2018 - Day 9. Yate Fragata, at sea

My transfer back to the airport at Isla Baltra went without a hitch, and once there I had to wait, and wait, and wait. The reps from the different boats were there collecting their guests, but nowhere could I see one with the sign “Golondrina”. Finally, after an eternity I heard someone announcing “FRAGATA, FRAGATA, Golondrina, FRAGATA, FRAGATA”. I jumped at the chance and soon learnt that I had been re-booked to this new yacht, and was assured that the change was for the better.

Transferring ourselves and or luggage to the ship took a while, but finally we were all together, all 15 of us, in the great cabin, listening to our guide Roberto. There are four German women, two Swiss men, one American man, one American woman, one British man, one Argentinian women, one Ecuadorian woman, one Spanish woman, one Irish man, one Dutch woman, and myself. At 64 I am the oldest, and the youngest might be 25 to 30; the mode seems to be in the late 30’s. We seem to be a varied enough group, and I look forward to forging some new friendships.

After the introduction we had a very nice lunch, which is the signal that our cook, Victoriano, is a good one. Afterward we sailed the boat to a quiet beach, Las Bachas in the northern part of Santa Cruz Island, where we disembarked for a short nature walk (we saw iguanas and flamingos) and our first snorkeling adventure. I had forgotten how awkward it is to try to walk with fins, but once in the water I immediately remembered the fine points of snorkeling, and in no time whatsoever was darting in an out of the rocks. I saw some huge parrot fish, a medium size shark, and two sea turtles. Yeah!

Once I got out I mentioned what I had seen and pretty soon I had a mini expedition at my heels to look for sea turtles. I managed to see two more, and the others saw at least one of them, so we declared the outing a success.


Once we were back in the ship we motored to the channel between Baltra and Santa Cruz to get rid of dirty laundry and empty crates, and then headed northeast to the small island of Genovesa, where tomorrow’s activities will be centered. To get there we will have to cross the equator, so I opened my GPS an pretty soon we had a “Crossing the Equator” party going. We crossed about 10 pm, shouted and exchanged embraces, and then we all headed for our cabins. I am sharing a cabin with Renee, one of the Swizz guys, to whom I made the present of a brand new pair of ear plugs. I hope he is able to sleep.

Sunday, January 21, 2018

Galapagos 2018 - Day 8. Eating my way through the day.

Today is a transition day. I will be in Isabela in the morning, and in the afternoon I will take the boat to Santa Cruz. I thought I might go snorkeling, but I am going to be snorkeling for a solid week starting tomorrow, so instead I decided to read in my room while sipping a cup of coffee, and afterward go for a walk. Puerto Villamil is a small town, but I still had not walked all 10 blocks of it, so I did it just to be able to say I knew the town. In the way I saw a bakery and stopped to buy a roll with ham and cheese. I was listening to the end of “The Voyage of the Beagle” and was reflecting that a single chapter devoted to the Galapagos was but a weak indication of the role that they were going to play in Darwin’s thinking.

My walking brought me to the market place, where there were a few stalls selling vegetables, and a couple of eating establishments offering breakfast. I stopped at one that offered bolones, curious about what that might be. I sat down, ordered a bolon breakfast and got a ball the size of a big orange, made of cooked plantain mashed together with chicharron de puerco, together with a fried egg and a spoonful of pork stew. It was delicious!

Resuming my walk, I reflected on the fact that Darwin was as much a geologist as he was a biologist. Having read the “Principles of Geology” of Charles Lyell, he was up to date on the concepts of orogeny, uplift and subsidence, stratigraphy (he was pretty good at distinguishing continental deposits from shallow marine and deep marine deposits), and paleontology (including the significance of paleogeographic distribution of species, and the issues associated to mass extinctions). On quite a few occasions he made shrewd observations about the geologic history of an area, correctly inferred from the volume of a thick conglomerate that extended for hundreds of miles the erosion of a former mountain chain, and of course elucidated the spectrum of fringe reefs, barrier reefs, and atolls as a consequence of subsidence of the ocean floor. Why is it, then, that modern biology programs do not require their students to at least take Principles of Geology?

My musings had taken me to the port, where I found a small street stall that was selling empanadas de pulpo.  Of course I had to have one and it was, OMG, absolutely delicious.

I spotted a shady park by the waterfront, with a good dozen wooden benches standing under so many low trees, and thought that would be a prime place to take a nap. Alas, it was not to be. Each of the benches was occupied by a sea lion. They too had thought this would be a great place for a nap. I tried to convince one of them to share, but all I got for my efforts was an angry bark.

Note to self: On inspecting some aerial photographs a few days later, I noticed that the Isla Tortuga, off the southeast corner of Isabela, is a dead ringer for the Greek island of Santorini. That is, it is a crescent of land, which defines the perimeter of a below-sea level caldera. If someone goes there in the future, I suspect that if you were to look carefully you might see evidence for a big pyroclastic eruption.

Eventually I said goodbye to my friend Gonzalo, donned my backpack, and went back to the port. A fine opportunity to have another empanada de pulpo! Afterward I got in my boat, and two hours later we were disembarking in Santa Cruz. I went back to the Fragata Hostel, where my gracious hostess was waiting for me with open arms. She had reserved my old room, so it was literally like coming home.

After settling in I went for a walk to soak the happy ambiance of the port, and on the way I bought a pretty tasty pan de casaba at one street stall, and a breaded dumpling of plantain and fish at another. That was my tipping point and I thought it would be wise to skip dinner tonight.

Among the interesting tourist traps along the waterfront there was a virtual reality museum about the pre-Hispanic cultures of Ecuador. You could even see a shrunken head! Too much like Ripley’s Believe It or Not for my taste, but I entered the souvenir shop and to my astonishment I found a replica of one of the Venus of Valdivia figurines (which I promptly bought to add to my collection of Venuses from the paleolithic of Europe). The Valdivia culture flourished in the lowlands of Ecuador between 3,000 and 2,000 BC, and the venuses from the older period were characteristically carved in stone (like the one I bought), with pronounced female attributes, very simplified faces, and very elaborate hairdresses. It is a very interesting piece, albeit quite small.

Tomorrow I am boarding a boat, and for the next 7 days will try to live the life of a dilettante, basking in the sun on deck, or snorkeling behind a hammer shark. I hope I don’t go stir crazy. I have to be at the airport tomorrow January 12 at 11 am, and the boat will drop me off at the same airport at 11 am on January 19, just in time for my flight to Guayaquil and Quito, where I will arrive at 10:30 pm. Three hours later I will board my flight to Dallas, and will finally arrive to San Francisco at 11 am on January 20. I will reconnect on January 20 or 21. 

Galapagos 2018 - Day 7. A perfect day.

I was a bit afraid I was going to wake up in pain, but I actually felt very fit after a good night sleep, ready to tackle a day bicycling along the lowlands. I am staying at Puerto Villamil, the only town in Isabela, where there are all sorts of boutique hotels, tourist agencies, and places to rent bikes. $15 for an all-day rental, although my plan was to come back around 3 pm. The lady at the renal place was very nice (just like all the other Ecuadorians I have met), and gave me a thorough description of the road I was to follow, and the places where I should stop.

The trail follows close to the coast, so the landscape all around me is desert with the occasional pocket beach amid basalt outcrops. The beaches and small lagoons were thin pickings when it came to bird watching (and what is the purpose of seeing a boring old bird anyway), but the rock outcrops were loaded with iguanas, some of which were big, fat, and totally smug about being protected (they would make a very nice iguana stew if we were in Mexico). Later, on the way back I stopped at a lagoon where I sighted five flamingos; they were feeding, with their heads upside down and shuffling sideways on a quick sidestep, which I imagine stirs the bottom slime and loosens the little critters they like for lunch.

I had started my ride with a slight overcast, but pretty soon the clouds burnt out and I was able to enjoy the glorious Galapagos sun. I had applied sun block before getting started, and was delighted that the cool breeze from the coast was blowing steadily.

Farther down along the way the road left the coast and cut across the desert. This should be good tortoise watching terrain, so I moved forward at a slow pace. The desert is occasionally cut by shallow ravines, where intermittent streams support a slightly greener vegetation and, in some instances, mud wallows. It was in one of these shady places that I spotted my first tortoise, unfortunately not doing much. My second tortoise was happily eating the fallen pad of a cactus, apparently oblivious to the sharp thorns. The desert is not as clear of vegetation as one would imagine, and there is a fair number of brush obstacles to the passage of tortoises, and after a while I learned to recognize the “trails” used by them (and I tested myself by walking down one of those paths to discover a tortoise within the first 20 paces).

A small rise, with a set of stairs and a lookout platform gave me a fine look of Sierra Negra Volcano, with its belt of greenery between 300 and 700 m elevation, just as if it were a green band around the crown of a broad hat.

The trail ended at “The Wall of Tears”, which is a wall to nowhere, built by the inmates of the penal colony that operated here in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Let me tell you that the inmates were no Incas, and that their wall, built with pieces of basalt to a height of maybe 10 m and a with of 5 m, experienced many collapses. Legend has it that many inmates were killed by these collapses, and that their souls still wale around the wall at night.

On the way back I saw what I suspect was a nesting tortoise. Clearly she had been scratching at the soil to form a shallow depression, maybe a meter in diameter and 20 cm in depth. The soil looked dry and hard. Later I learned that indeed, the reason the tortoises come down from the greener elevations to the desert lowlands is to find a dry place where they can bury their eggs, and that the mother will urinate where she digs her nest to soften the ground and bury 4 to 6 eggs. Then she covers the eggs and urinates and defecates to create a kind of adobe that will keep the eggs safe. The eggs, which look like a ping pong ball but are the size of a tennis ball hatch for 120 days, and then the small tortoises spend a couple of days coming out of their shells, only to find themselves entombed in adobe. It may take a whole month for the small tortoises to dig themselves out of the adobe, all the time surviving on the reserves of food and liquid they gathered from the eggs. Once free, their struggle for subsistence starts in earnest. [I learned all this lore about tortoises at the hatching center I visited once I got back to town. There they will keep the little tortoises for up to 8 years before returning them to their natural environments. A 8 year old tortoise is the same size as a mature desert tortoise one might find in northern Mexico and the American Southwest. A 25 year old Galapagos tortoise might be half a meter long, and it won’t reach its final size of 1 to 1.5 m long until it is between 100 and 150 years old. Tortoises might start reproducing when they are 40 years old.] My last sighting was of a young couple that was slowly pondering whether the time for reproduction had finally arrived.


By the time I got back to town the sun was getting pretty toasty, so after having my late almuerzo I sat down in the shade, with a book and a cold beer, and eventually faded into a well-deserved siesta. When I woke up, around 6:30 pm, it was already time to go to dinner! I had previously invited the manager of the hotel to dinner, so together we walked a few blocks to his favorite restaurant, and had a delicious meal. His name is Gonzalo, he is 62 years old, and his family lives in Quito. Not only has he been a gracious host, but he has two daughters and two proud fathers always enjoy exchanging stories about our beloved ones. I am very happy to have made yet another friend.

Galapagos 2018 - Day 6. El Volcán de Sierra Negra

Today is a hiking day, so by 7:20 am I waited in front of the hotel for my ride, and by 8 am my group got together high in the volcano for the 8 km trek in (and the same 8 km on the way out). We had climbed from the desert scrub of the coast up through the green mist forest to about 1,000 m elevation, and were going to hike up to the top of one of the largest volcanoes in Isabela, Sierra Negra volcano. The island is actually formed by five different volcanoes, which give it an aspect very similar to the outline of England.

As I think I already mentioned, Ecuadorians take very seriously their role as stewards of the environment, so  we were a properly constituted group of 9 hikers and one professional guide, Humberto. These time we were 2 Canadians, 3 Chinese, 1 Argentinian, 1 Mexican, and 2 other who never opened their mouths so I cannot tell where they were from. I had good conversations with the Argentinian young woman, and with the Canadian couple.

It took us a half hour of very gentle climb to make it to the rim of the caldera, which was completely spectacular. A good 10 km in diameter, the immense depression had been flooded by lava from the 2005 eruption, whose vent was along one of the ring fractures, so it looked like the lava had congealed only yesterday.

Galapagos volcanoes are true shield volcanoes, with a roughly circular outline, a caldera on top, and small flank vents that adorn the shield as so many studs. In contrast, Hawaiian volcanoes are more like croissants, with a pronounced arcuate shape, and rift valleys that extend along the axes of the horns of the croissant, where most of the eruptions take place. I am not sure what causes the difference, but I suspect that the Galapagos volcanoes are on top of an ocean ridge, so the water around them is only 1,000 m deep and they don’t develop into giants. The Hawaiian volcanoes, in contrast, rise from 4,000 m deep, are absolutely enormous, and are torn by gravitational forces as their immense weight causes them to settle, spread, and tear apart.

S far as wildlife goes we didn’t get to see much. Humberto pointed out the small and medium finches, and once again I had to conclude that they are non-descript boring birds. We got to see lots of guayaba (guava) trees, and even plucked some of the fruits to taste. Before you cry anathema for plucking the local fruit, you should know that this is an invasive species, tremendously successful, and that the park rangers would be very glad if it were to disappear from this Earth. No chance, but at least it forms distinctive tall bushes, and not tangles like those of blackberries. The latter are a real issue for the movement of tortoises.

We walked along the side of the caldera for a good hour, and then headed down the other side to see a relatively young cluster of vents and their associated lava flows. It was hard going, because the lava was like clinker and made for slow, careful walking. The colors of the hydrothermally-altered rock were pretty spectacular and we all got some pretty cool photos.

The way back was hard on the knees (or shall I say particularly hard on my knees), but I actually had a very enjoyable hike back chatting with my Canadian new friends. It turns out she is an Instructional Designer, who works with faculty on designing courses to take advantage of computer technology, online learning, and other of the new approaches being tried by universities the world over. Since in a humble scale I am all for trying new stuff we had plenty of stories to exchange. With such charming company the way back felt remarkably pleasant, but the truth is that I was exhausted by the time we got to the cars. I hate to say this, but old age is catching up with me.

The afternoon was non-descript, with lunch followed by a long nap. I awoke around 5 pm, in good time to go for a walk along the beach and a scrumptious dinner of parrillada (a small grill is brought to the table, loaded with steak, liver, kidney, tripe, veal chops, sausages, morcilla (blood sausage), and potatoes. Yes, it was too much for a single person, but I soldiered on and licked the plate clean. 

Galapagos 2018 - Day 5. Santa Cruz to Isabela (aka Albermarle)

I slept fitfully until 6 am, when I got up and got ready to go find a boat to Isabela. I had seen a sign that said the boat departed at 7:30 am, and wanted to get there with enough time to buy my ticket. First mistake, tickets are to be bought from one of the travel agencies. One of the guys there went looking for the manager to find out if I could get a late ticket, but was told there were no more. “Maybe something a bit later?, I asked hopefully. “There is nothing until the afternoon.” Rats!

I decided to accost the manager directly, taking advantage of the fact that he was superbusy and trying to troubleshoot too many things at a time. Two guys had just come to show their vouchers when I interposed my question, and for some reason he added me to the other two, put a pink sticker on our shirts, and told us to go stand with another group that was waiting to board. I went along but was obliged to tell the second in command that I still had to pay my ticket. He turned toward his boss and said something like “This guy still has to pay”, but he was ignored, so he shrugged his shoulders and told me to stay with my group. Gotta love the Latin American way of doing business (I did eventually paid the $30 of the ticket).

We were escorted to a small boat, which to me looked very inappropriate for blue water sailing, but it was only the taxi that took us to a bigger boat for the two hour transit to Isabela. The boat was like the ones used for charter fishing, and with 16 of us aboard looked quite cozy. I was afraid of getting seasick, but the sea was relatively calm, and the ups and downs eventually served to rock me to sleep.

Once we got to Isabela I still had to walk 10 minutes from the port to the hotel that had been recommended by my hostess at the Hostal Fragata in Santa Cruz. My new hotel, Hotel Sierra Negra, faces the beach, and from the balcony of my $40 per night room I have a grand look of the ocean.

The weather was fine, with the same light overcast that has made the three days I have been in Galapagos bearable. The clouds parted for a bit after I cam to the hotel, and it is clear that when the sun shines the land and its inhabitants broil. The sound of the waves, the view of the beach, and the enjoyment of being in the shade of my room made me decide that today was going to be  relax day, to be spent reading and doing as little as possible.

I did go out for a short walk, to see about booking a trek up to the Volcán de Sierra Negra, and have lunch. I have learned a couple of things. First, Galapagos is catering to rich tourism, so they have all sorts of offers for tours, while at the same time they hinder the independent tourist by (a) requiring that you have a local guide almost anywhere you go, and (b) having to road signs that might lead the undesirable solo tourist to the good spots (but I will do my best to foil them the day after tomorrow). I have mixed feelings about these policies, which are undoubtedly great for creating local employment and definitely necessary for protection of their amazing ecosystems, because you can quickly run up a big entertainment tab.

The second thing I learned is that lunch is served from 12 noon to 2 pm, and that if you come outside that time you are likely to have items missing from your plate. The best deal is to take the daily menu, where you get a bowl of soup (but the lady was out of soup when I came at 3 pm so instead I got a small salad), a plate with the main dish (fish, chicken, beef, seafood) together with rice, beans, veggies (e.g., plantains, potatoes, yams), and a final dessert of fruit or jello. There is always a glass of lemonade or fruit juice as well. Total cost $7 to $10. So lunch is a full meal, right? Then, between 8 and 10 pm, you go out to have supper, which also includes soup, main dish, side dishes, dessert, and beverage, again for $7 to $10. You get to eat a full meal twice a day! Now, that is what I call civilized.

Galapagos 2018 - Day 4. Bicycling around Indefatigable

It turns out that when the British owned the world they felt free to survey and name the different islands of the Galapagos Archipelago, so Santa Cruz got named Indefatigable (my guess is that it got named after the ship HMS Indefatigable, but I really don’t know). In fact, one of the reasons Darwin ended spending some time in the islands was because one of the tasks of Captain Fitzroy, commander of the HMS Beagle, was to survey the channels around the islands.

OK, after this little piece of trivia, which has nothing to do with the day’s activities, I will tell you that I was violently awoken at the wee hours of the morning by a violent pounding on my door (or was it a dream because I seem to recall hearing pounding throughout the night?) I came out of my room, half asleep and in my skivvies, to the hysterical babble of this woman; it took me a while, but I finally understood that she was being driven mad by my snoring! I apologized in the best way I could, blaming the thinness of the partition walls, and back in my room moved to the small bed that was as far as possible from the partition wall, tried to stay awake for half an hour to let her fall asleep, and turned myself away from her room to try to deflect the worst of the noise. Not very funny, because I have to consider the havoc I could wreck in the confines of a boat for a whole week. I will try to stop at the hardware store in the next few days to see if they sell earplugs, so I can bring the aboard as a peace offering to my future victims.

I woke up for a second time around 6:30 am, showered, dressed, breakfasted with my landlady, and hit the road with the intent of locating the one place that might rent me a scooter. All to no avail, and after covering a fair amount of ground on foot finally had to settle on renting a bicycle. The only problem of riding a bicycle on a volcanic island is that, if you start from the coast, there is no way to go but up. I love riding a bike, but am no longer a young’un and huffing and puffing up the slope grows old very rapidly. I was also a bit taken aback that after seeing so much cool wildlife yesterday this time I was drawing a complete blank. Sure, it is a pretty countryside, but I am here to play naturalist and not in a simple sightseeing tour.

I spotted a road sign that rubbed it in, just like a bad prank. It is the standard yellow caution sign, which in the US normally would have a side view of deer or cattle, but in here sported the profile of a giant tortoise. Yeah, right, I can see a tortoise ambling across the road.

OMG! Why did the giant tortoise cross the road? To move from feasting in the highlands to search for a mate, couple, and finally bury eggs in the lowlands. I was flabbergasted when I saw a tortoise come out of a farm road on one side, cross the road at a stately pace, and ponderously continue on its merry way down another farm road. A few yards behind it were a couple more, chomping their way to the highway, and putting out enormous turds that look like yams. Oh … that is why the bike path I was following had patches of dry grass squashed down by bicycle tires. I was wondering how the collectors of the 1905-1906 expedition had found the one remaining tortoise in Fernandina. Now I know that they did it by following the turds.

I finally made it to the top of the island, where a friendly store keeper from the town of Santa Rosa saved me from total collapse by putting a cold beer in front of me. Once I was coherent again, he suggested I should ride down the hill to the private Chato Ranch, where for $5 I could visit the lava tubes and wander amongst the giant tortoises. Of course that meant that after riding 16 grueling kilometers uphill I had to go downhill in a different direction (no problem, even pumpkins roll downhill), and go up again later in the day. Groan! But I came to see the unique Galapagos fauna, so I braced myself and went the extra 5 km downhill. It was absolutely tortoise paradise! The ranch owners have worked hard at eradicating the invasive blackberry bushes, which block the way of the tortoises, effectively creating a corridor that the tortoises like for their migration up and down the mountain. They have also dug a couple of mud wallows, which the tortoises like very much. So, without owning tortoises (which is forbidden by law) they have created a Tortoise Las Vegas, where the huge animals come to eat, drink, wallow in the mud, and be merry (and I saw a couple being quite merry, but what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas).

Now that I am imbued with tortoise knowledge, I will tell you that giant tortoises are only found in two places: The Archipelago of the Seychelles and Mascarene island (but they became extinct at the latter in 1900) in the Indian Ocean, and the Galapagos islands in the east Pacific. The ones in the Indian Ocean are related to the small tortoises of Madagascar, whereas those in the Galapagos are related to small tortoises in Ecuador. The story goes that some tortoises must have been sunning on a fallen log when a swift current brought it to the ocean, and somehow the tortoises survived until the log was beached on an island (1,000 kilometers away, so they must have been pretty sturdy seafarers). Evolution then drove them toward gigantism, perhaps because of relaxed predation in the island environment (although giant tortoises in terra firma are known in the geologic record, for example form the Miocene Mehrten Formation in the Central Valley of California). Nowadays the males are truly enormous, a good meter and a half long, a meter wide, and with a dome that rises maybe 75 cm up. Females are half to two thirds of the size.

I decided to walk all the way up, and was doing good progress when a good Samaritan with a pickup drove by and offered to lift me up to Santa Rosa, a kind offer that I was not going to refuse. From there I coasted down the mountain for what seemed to be an interminable distance, reached town, returned the bicycle, and collapsed in the outside couch of my friendly hostel. I am one tired tourist.

Galapagos 2018 - Day 3. From Quito to Santa Cruz

I woke up early, showered, and was ready to go a good half hour from the time my taxi was supposed to come pick me up, so I loaded on three complimentary cups of good Ecuadorian coffee before heading for the airport. Check in was a breeze, but I almost missed my flight because I dozed in the wrong gate. No big deal because I had put an alarm in my cell phone, but I was the last to arrive at the correct gate, and I could hear the attendants radioing to each other “We found him.” And “You can put his luggage in the plane again.”

We landed in the Isla Baltra airport, went through a rather thorough inspection to make sure we were not carrying potential pests into the islands, and walked out into the desert landscape of this small island, which at some point during World War II was an American military base, of which only the concrete pads remain. A short free bus ride brought us to the small port, where for $1 a small boat took us to the adjoining and much bigger Santa Cruz Island. I had my first wildlife sighting from the boat, when a pregnant lady with two kids showed me a ray that was leisurely swimming past the prow, in perfectly crystalline water.

Once on the other side there were taxis to be taken (but Ecuadorians are not pushy at all, so it did not feel like you were being smothered by hawkers), but I chose to ride the $2 bus. Puerto Ayora, where my hostel was located is on the south side of the island, whereas the airport is on the north, so I had ahead of me a ride of about 40 km, which I enjoyed by listening to “The Voyage of the Beagle” by Charles Darwin (I love audiobooks!). I know that my blog entries sometimes tend to be long, but now I feel vindicated by the fact that Darwin’s own travel log was also a candid description of the people he met, the costumes of the land, the animals and plants, or the rocks and the landscape. He had plenty of digressions about funny mishaps, or about the exotic food he ate. So there!

I was reflecting on the change in the vegetation from the arid north side of the island to the moist south side, and comparing what I saw with Darwin’s description of the Falkland Islands, when my eyes popped out of my head. There, slowly walking through a clearing, was a giant tortoise! I felt so … happy. I had been reading about the 1905-1906 scientific collecting expedition of the California Academy of Sciences, and about the carnage that for the sake of science the collectors did, that I had little hope of seeing one of these majestic animals in the wild. And there it was! I felt he had come out just to welcome me to the Galapagos, and from there on wore this stupid grin of delight.

Once we got into Puerto Ayora I asked the bus driver if he knew where Hostal Fragata was located, and would he please drop me off at the most convenient spot. Sure, no problem. Five minutes later he was stopping the bus right in front of the hostel! Have I already told you how friendly Ecuadorians are?

After dropping off my stuff I went for a walk. I would like to rent a motorcycle, or at least a bicycle, so I can go exploring tomorrow, and also get a feeling for the lay of the land. Puerto Ayora is a pretty coastal town, clean and friendly, and totally invested in welcoming the tourist without smothering him. Oh, look, there is an iguana (photo opportunity). And there is another. And another. Pretty soon I saw I was surrounded (if such an active verb could be applied to this most lethargic of creatures). Well, clearly I will not have any trouble spotting this type of reptile. But this were run of the mill, albeit remarkably big and fat, iguanas. The real treat would be to spot the rare swimming iguanas, which I seem to recall will be the subject of the visit I will make with the boat to one of the northern islands next week. I continued my walk, photographing pelicans and non-descript little brown birds (I am deadly afraid of missing the finches, or pinzones, that are so often associated with Darwin’s thinking about evolution by natural selection, but unfortunately pinzones are very small birds with rather boring plumage, so I am just taking photos of every bird I see, hoping that at a later time someone will help me find out if I struck gold—incidentally, legend has it that this is exactly what Darwin did, and that many of his specimens got mixed up and he had to rely on the notes of Captain Fitzroy to figure which bird came from which island).

When I reached the end of town I took a detour to a small peer, to take a picture of the bay and the boats, when I once again noticed a richness of iguanas. They were everywhere on the planks of the peer, but looking down I saw that they were also think on the ground, sunning on a low, black, shiny basalt outcrop. Ha, maybe if I waited for high tide I could see them scramble out of the water, and then I could check a sighting of swimming iguanas. I was toying with this thought when, a good 50 ft from the shore, I saw a small something moving through the water. Is that a fish? No, it is … a swimming iguana! The little guy was happily swimming in from deep water, using his legs as fins and his long tail as a weaving propeller. I was enthralled as I saw him approaching the shore, crawling up unto the rocks, and finally collapsing under the broiling sun to warm up after an invigorating swim. Will Galapagos wonders never end?

My wanderings took me to the Charles Darwin Research Station, where Ecuadorian scientists and conservationists collaborate with colleagues from all over the world to study and preserve the ecologic richness of the islands. They are world famous for their efforts to breed and re-introduce tortoises in the islands that are/were their natural habitat. You probably remember that the tortoises played a crucial role in Darwin’s thinking because he noticed that even though all the tortoises belonged to the same genus, the ones on any given island were distinctively different from those in other islands. Of the 15 species that existed in Darwin’s time only 11 are left, and of those 11 a good half is in danger of extinction because there are very few individuals left. So many pairs have been caught and bred in captivity, and their eggs have been hatched at the station, and the hatchlings have been raised to ages of 2 or 3 years, and then they have been re-introduced into their original islands. The program has been very successful, although in all but three of the 11 islands the populations of free roaming tortoises are less than 100.


A sad story is the one told about Lonesome George, from the Pinta island. The 1905-1906 Scientific Collecting Expedition took the last remaining tortoise of Fernandina island, and the last three remaining tortoises from Pinta island, effectively causing the extinction of tortoises in those two islands. Imagine thus the surprise of the park rangers when in 1971 one more male remaining tortoise was discovered in Pinta! If they could just find a female, then they thought they could bring this species back from extinction. It was a long shot, but after all George had successfully hid himself for 65 years (and once you see the density of the underbrush in the islands you could understand that a low key tortoise could very well hide in plain sight). So they went into search mode, and for 40 years combed Pinta in search of an elusive Georgina, alas with no success. Lonesome George finally died in 2012, a most painful epitaph of the last of his species.

Galapagos 2018 - Day 2. Quilotoa

Yesterday I was tired and I am afraid I did not do justice to the many new sights, colors, and music of Quito. Pity, because today I am not spending the day in the city, but am taking a trip to the countryside to the south.

Before getting started, let me tell you that paying for things here is not that easy. Very few outfits accept credit cards, and paying for the Galapagos boat tour used most of my cash, plus I had to go get cash from the ATM. And here I hit a snag: I wanted to withdraw $600, which I understood was the daily maximum, but after trying unsuccessfully a cuple of machines I had to go back empty handed to the travel agency. “Oh, so sorry, we should have made it clear that the maximum at any given time is $300”. So I went out again, visited three or four ATM’s, and finally got my money. Unbeknownst to me, my several attempts triggered an alert at my bank, which promptly blocked my card.

The following morning, at 7 am, I tried to get another $300, but was denied without a word of explanation. Oh well, I thought, since we are an hour ahead of Eastern Time I probably had to wait until banks opened in the US to get my daily allotment clear.

Innocent as a babe I waited at the meeting point or the tour, and was delighted to see the tour van arrived at exactly 7:15 am, as promised. A few minutes later we took off to our third and final pickup point, and at the stroke of 8 am started on our adventure. We were an interesting group, composed of 6 Brazilians, 2 Venezuelans, 2 Colombians, 2 Ecuadorians currently living in the US, 1 Frenchman, and 1 Mexican (yours truly). In the narrow confines of the small bus, and under the cheerful coordination of our tour guide Erica, we became instant friends. Most of the adventurers were couples, young and old, so the two lonely hearts, Tania and myself, ended sitting together and having a great time throughout the day, chatting. Tania is Ecuadorian, but emigrated to the US 20 years ago and was as eager to learn all about modern Ecuador as I was.

As we drove south of the city we entered the Avenue of the Volcanoes, the name given to the central valley of the Andean altiplano, which is bordered by majestic volcanoes such as Cotopaxi, Tunguragua, Chimborazo, and Ilinizas. Erica was happily streaming all sorts of information, legends, and trivialities when she mentioned the French-Spanish Geodetic Expedition. This expedition had been sent to measure three degrees of latitude across the equator, as a way of settling the controversy about the slightly oblate shape of the Earth.  I had just recently read a book about it, so when Erica asked why we thought the expedition had decided to do their measurements along this very valley I was able to correctly answered that it was because the peaks of the volcanoes provided for excellent reference points for the triangulation. [Note: The expedition was led by La Condamine, who turned out to be a poor leader and was eventually replaced by Bouguer—of geophysical fame—so I felt I was traversing key scientific ground.]

At some point we swung quite near Cotopaxi, which is one of the most photogenic volcanoes in the whole Cordillera, and Erica took the opportunity to tell the story of how Taita Cotopaxi had fallen in love with Mama Tunguragua, and out of their union Pichincha was born. However, Mama Tunguragua was fond of flirting, and one good day was caught cheating with Chimborazo. Taita Cotopaxi became furious, tore little Pichincha out of Tunguraga’s arms, and had him live far away from his mother. This is why, from south to north, we have Chimborazo and his lover Tungurugua on one side of the valley, and Cotopaxi and his son Pichincha on the other side.

About 40 km out of the city we turned west, in the direction of the Quilotoa lagoon, and started traversing an area that reminded me very much of the area of Los Humeros, where I did my doctoral dissertation. There was something about the gentle roundness of the slopes and . . . the deeply incised canyon of the Rio Toachi! Yes, it was a landscape that had been recently (in a geologic sense) draped by a thick pyroclastic flow, and the ignimbrite that was left behind gave the region its characteristic morphology. I was thus totally primed to recognize Quilotoa as a deep collapse caldera, the floor of which is occupied by a turquoise alkaline lake. It was an awesome spectacle!

The plan of the day was to walk down to the lake from the rim of the caldera, kayak and loaf around for a half hour down by the lake, and then climb the steep path over an elevation gain of 400 m (1,200 ft). Ah, but before the exercise I got distracted by a lady who was roasting a cuy (guinea pig), and I decided I just had to have it. I offered a taste to my fellow travelers, but most of them recoiled with alarm, particularly when I informed that that it tasted a bit like rat.

Down and down we went, and with every step I became more and more concerned about the way back. My right knee has been acting up for the last few years, and I am not sure that the steep climb was wise on the second day of an extended adventure. Imagine thus my delight when, after admiring the caldera lake for half hour, I discovered that some enterprising locals offered the service of their mules to take portly tourists back up. The best $15 I have spent in my life 😊

From there we went to get our late lunch, which consisted on a soup of lamb tripe, seasoned with cooked lamb blood, onions, and avocado (yumm!), and a main dish of rice, beets, and roasted lamb. Our Venezuelan friends added the right touch when they asked for some aji (kind of a mild Mexican salsa), and we all laughed about the tender-tongued Brazilians who had never eaten spicy food.

All in all it was a great day, blessed with great weather. Speaking of weather, the day before I arrived they had had the most terrible weather, with rain, hail, and sleet. No sooner had I landed the weather turned around, and I have seen nothing but beautiful sun both in my day through Quito, and now in the day exploring the Region Andina. What can I say, I am just that kind of lucky guy.

Since I spoke about the Region Andina, Ecuador has four regions. From east to west these are: The Amazonia (where mots of their petroleum reserves are found), the Andes (where Quito is located, and where growing roses is big business—did you know that most of the roses used in the New Year’s parade in Pasadena are Ecuadorian roses?), the Coast (where most of the commercial production of bananas and cocoa comes from), and Galapagos (where most tourists are headed sooner or later). This also gives you an idea of Ecuador’s economic sectors: Petroleum, ag products, tourism, and services.


By the time we made it back to Quito it was late, about 8 pm, and after fond farewells all I could think about was bed. I still had to get money out, so I walked to Plaza Foch which by that time was in full swing, full of light, music, and happy revelers. Curses, the stupid ATM machine once again refused to give me money! So I walked a few more blocks to the Pichincha Bank, where yesterday I was able to get some money, and now finally the machine deigned to inform me that a hold had been placed in my account. $#&@ Bank of America! After a few more expletives I realized I was going to have to call the stupid bank, so I headed back to my hotel to attempt an international call via Skype. To no avail because the connection was so poor that I could not navigate through the gauntlet of “press 2 … press 3 … goodbye.” What to do next? Well there is always the internet and, kalu-kaley, I managed to unblock my account! We will see tomorrow if it works.

Galapagos 2018 - Day 1. Quito

I landed in Quito airport, after 21 hours of travel, at the stroke of midnight. Nothing like arriving in a new country when all decent people are already in bed. Immigration and customs were totally painless, and I immediately felt the good vibes of the Ecuadorian folk. I came out unto the lobby and immediately located the express bus that makes the service between the airport and the northern end of the city. For only $8 US dollars I would be transported to the northern end of the city, from which I would have to take a taxi to my hotel, which is in the Zona Rosa of Quito. What a drag, having to hunt for a taxi, but no sooner had the bus stopped that a taxi appeared out of nowhere, the driver had my bag even before I had landed on the sidewalk, and were soon speeding through the empty city and arriving at my hotel. Cost? Another $8! Not bad, not bad at all.

Going back to the ride from the airport, it is a good one hour drive to get to the city. First you go down into the canyon of the Guayllabamba river, and then you have to climb, and climb, and climb the opposite side until you crest the hill and, voila, the city extends at your feet occupying the bottom of a wide valley. It is in many respects similar to the city of Cuzco, high in the mountains (the similarities with Peru are striking, and probably arise from the fact that both were important provinces of the Inca empire).
My taxi driver was a chatty one, and told me a couple of interesting factoids about the last few decades. To begin with, the currency of the country used to be the Sucre, which for many years held an exchange rate of 4,500 Sucres for US$1. Everything was going well, and in the 70’s and 80’s the country experienced significant prosperity. Then some damn economist tried to fix what was not broken, the Sucre was allowed to fluctuate with the market, and inflation skyrocketed to the point that it took over 25,000 Sucres to make a US dollar. The country went in downspin. Then a strong president decided to abandon the Sucre and made, instead, the US dollar the official currency of the country (El Salvador does the same). So all prices here are in dollars! Sometimes that makes touristy things look expensive, or a least fully priced. Food on the other hand is inexpensive. According to my informant the shift to the dollar has completely arrested inflation, so after having lost most of their assets during the hyperinflation period, most people here now feel financially secure.

I mentioned that Quito seemed to be a handsome city (at least based on what I could see in a taxi that was flying through red lights at 1:30 am), and my driver explained that for about 10 years they had a mayor who had invested a lot in infrastructure and in educating the citizens about the need to keep Quito clean and appealing for the tourists. Unfortunately, this resulted in high taxes and draconian fines for those littering. It worked, but the people eventually got tired of the absurd fines and voted him out of office. The new mayor is a lot more laid back, but that means that for the last two years very little has been spent in infrastructure, so people are no bickering about the potholes on the streets. Go figure.

My hotel is named La Vieja Cuba, and has been developed in what in the 1980’s had been a rather large mansion. I like it, but by 2 pm all I cared was to hit the sack, so I did.

A few hours later . . .

I awoke at 7 am, ready to go play tourist. After a quick breakfast I went to the heart of the Zona Rosa (aka La Mariscal), which like the one in Mexico City is the hip part of the city where all the nice restaurants, boutiques, travel agencies, and tourist-oriented shops are congregated. The center of the action is Plaza Foch, where at 9:20 am I took the hop-in hop-off tourist bus, which in other cities of the world I found is an excellent way to see the main attractions of the city.

Quito is a beautiful city, with about two and a half million inhabitants (the whole urban sprawl is probably 4 million, and the total population of Ecuador is 14 million). Like many old cities (it was established in 1534), it has the old downtown, but is surrounded by handsome modern areas, many built during the good years of the 70’s and 80’s. There are also the fabelas farther up the sides of the valley, but even those look properly urbanized with well painted brick structures. The draconian fines of yesteryears imbedded their message deep into the minds of the people, because it is a remarkably clean city.

When we drove through the new parts of the city our attention was called to many fine parks, markets, and boulevards with tall, beautiful trees. Once we entered the old part of the city, however, the streets became very narrow (driving a big bus through them must be a leading cause of early demise amongst middle-age males), and every building proved to be a priceless church (the gilded altars of the Church of the Convent of San Francisco being by far the most impressive) or an important colonial building. One difference with Cuzco is that archaeological sites are rare; there are a couple of museum I didn’t have time to visit that reportedly have very fine collections of pre-Hispanic art, but nothing is left of the civil structures of the Inca town.

The city is dominated by the Pichincha volcano to the west, and El Panecillo cinder come to the south. Pichincha is 4,500 m in elevation, so clearly I passed on hiking it. El Panecillo, however, gave me the best panoramic view over the city, and over the Calzada de los Volcanes which is defined by the Cotopaxi and other three volcanoes that can be seen to the south, east, and north of the city (add Pichincha to that distinguished company). Paradise for the volcanologist! The other distinguishing characteristic of El Panecillo is a monumental statute of the Virgin of Quito, made of aluminum, who looks over the city. The construction of this statue caused much controversy, because rumor has it that El Panecillo is where the Inca had its northern palace, and it is there that Initiraymi, the ceremony with which the Inca greeted the god Sun every summer solstice, is traditionally celebrated.

The tour ended with a drive through another modern portion of the city, a stop at the central park and botanical garden (much beloved by the Quiteňos, who on weekends flood the park), and finally a return to the Zona Rosa. I left the tour there because I had given myself the task of visiting several travel agencies and finding an affordable boat trip in the Galapagos. Prices started at $6,000! Finally, after looking around I found a 7 day trip in a small boat for $1,800. I hope it is a good deal (and my rebellious free spirit kept whispering that I should wait until being there to find the best deal), and has taken care of the last week of my stay in the Galapagos. I still have to finess on the spot the first week, so I have not turned into a complete looser. More about that as the time comes, but for now there was nothing more to do but go back to the old downtown and be a tourist to the death. I was delighted, once I decided to go back, to find a tram that for 25 cents brought me back to the Zona Rosa, famished but satisfied that I had done a fair sampling of the tourist sites of this beautiful city (I really would have to stay here for a few more days to “do Quito”, but other places are calling to me.

I did mention there are many similarities with Peru, particularly when it comes to food. Humitas, ceviche con choclo, sanduiches de chancho, choripan, and many other Peruvian favorites are everyday fare in here. I had used my mid-day break to visit travel agencies, so I has skipped lunch, and had now promised myself a nice ceviche con choclo and a deep-fried pescado paneado for my dinner. But of course I forgot that here “lunch” is really “dinner”, and that many of the interesting small restaurants close for the day at 5 pm. Rats! Finally, after having walked dozens of blocks looking for a place I found a small family-owned fonda, where for $7 I had a nice plate of “aguachile de camaron” (but with the chile part replaced by thinly sliced onions), a bowl of pipping hot fried plantain chips, and a big and very cold beer. Delicious!


Tomorrow I plan to make an excursion to the countryside, so I need to be up at 6 am. I better get to bed.