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.
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