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.