Ecuador: Galapagos

We left Lima on a high note after having hiked to Machu Picchu a few days earlier and eaten a wonderful, if enormous, final meal at Panchita which is not to be missed if you go to Lima (word of warning: all the dishes are huge and easily shared amongst two or three people!).  It was sad to say goodbye to Graham who was an excellent addition to our adventure and it was sad to say goodbye to Peru, a country we had barely even begun to explore really but which none-the-less offered so much.

We arrived in Quito, Ecuador after a short 2hr-ish flight which was quite bumpy in parts, not surprising with all the Andean mountains thrusting hither and thither and the randomly dense cloud layer: frightening.  Quito was overcast, gray and a little damp and, but as it is at 10,000ft or so and surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, actually very mild.

We stood around at the tiny airport waiting for our taxista to show up from our hotel and crowd-watching (there was a futbol squad and some rockstar (minor I would guess) that the press had turned up for).  After 20 minutes or so we gave up and took our own taxi to what turned out to be a run down dump with hints of former glory.  Lonely Planet (LP) and South American Explorers (SAE) had recommended this place but we were quite dismayed.  We looked at three rooms until we found one we were willing to sleep in and even then we were stretching.  The price of the place was the same that we had paid in Cusco ($60 for the two of us with a great breakfast)  but whereas Rumi Punku had great rooms, comfy and warm beds, a strictly enforced no smoking rule and good breakfasts, the Sierra Madre was mostly the opposite:  the beds were lumpy (note I said beds!) there was clearly someone smoking in their room several floors below us but the smoke permeated all the rooms (as we found out from other unhappy guests) and breakfast was not included.  Needless to say we left the next day.  They refused to honor the discount they offered to members of SAE so the cost was even more, we were not amused.

Our new place, Vieja Cuba (Old Cuba), was lovely, about the same price, included breakfast and was staffed by lovely people (unlike Sierra Madre).  The first few days in Quito were marred by Darcie having a mild bout of stomach flu which I later got towards the end of the week.  In between we made efforts to wander around in Quito to see the churches and museums and such.  We were generally pretty disappointed:  Quito is a bit of a pit.  In general we just couldn’t wait for our trip to the Galapagos to start.

Fast forward to May 4 and it is Monday morning, 7am, and we are picked up at the hotel by the tour company and whisked off along with a bunch of other punters to the airport for our three hour flight to Baltra which is one of two airports in the Islands and was built by the US military during the early days of WW2 when there was a rabid fear that the Japanese were on their way.  Not sure how a base on the Equator miles from anywhere was a target but…

The trip was brief and boring, endless clouds, but it didn’t rain on us once we got there, at least not until everyone and the luggage were on board, then it rained cats and dogs.  Baltra is a mostly flat lump of old sea floor that has been lifted up over the millennia and is now being ground down down by the weather (and man).  Uninteresting, no animals particularly and little vegetation except for some scrubby plants and the occasional cactus (we have the US military to thank for this apparently).

Our home for the next week, the MV Santa Cruz, weighed anchor and motored out of the bay next to the airport and whisked us off to  nearby Santa Cruz island and some easy hiking, a raft of land iguanas, lizards and birds of the finchy sort all bookended by feasting.  This cruise was to be about eating, eating a bit more and maybe just a little more eating.  Occasionally there were to be casual walks to check out the aminals.

Ok, so I am being facetious, really it was about the animals, their habits and habitats and casual walks.  The casual walks are those designated and built by the government and are intended to provide tourist-access to some of the animals but without changing the landscape overly much thus even though it would be easy to walk 10k the trail system is only 1 or 2k and there is no opportunity for walking off trail.  You are not allowed to even be in/on the islands without a guide and they are tasked with keeping you on the path.  This is very important since the islands get very little rain and are not prone to being easily vegetated (or remaining thus) so human trampling has a pronounced negative effect.

The government/park service has gone to great lengths to schedule boat sailings such that there are never more than two or three boats in any one anchorage at the same time.  The boat we were on was one of the largest with a possible tourist complement of 90 (while we were there only 45 or so) but most of the boats are much smaller with guests numbering 10 to 20 or so.  That all said there were a lot of boats motoring around despite the fact that it was low season.

Each day I would wake up to watch the sunrise which some days was denied courtesy of the cloud cover.  There were usually only a few guests moving around so it was possible to spend the first half hour or so in solitude on-deck with a cup of coffee and the camera watching the colors come alive.  After that first day’s brief rain we had good weather, mostly mildly overcast and warm (75F-85F) and humid (although nothing like Costa Rica).

  

In general we went to two islands a day or at least two anchorages a day if the island was big (Santa Cruz and Isabella).  The morning stop was always a hike, really a gentle stroll across usually pretty flat land, and the afternoon stop was usually a combo walk/snorkel although some days it was just a snorkel or just a walk.

The walks were incredibly easy, so much so that an 85 year old guest who had had both hips replaced in the past six months and had been wheeled around in a wheel chair at the airport and walked with canes was able to walk every trail much to her relief I gathered.

Each island is different from the next in several ways: age, level of volcanic activity, vegetation and wildlife populations.  As many television shows have said, the wildlife is pretty much chilled-out with respect to humans.  In other words you can walk right up to most animals (except for the little birds) and they don’t even flinch.  It is pretty cool!  We of course took an enormous quantity of photos which we are still paring down.  There are lots and lots of photos of lava lizards, iguanas and boobies of the blue-footed variety.  There are some photos of turtles (both land and sea), some of the endless sea lions (some being an understatement of course) and the of course there are a few of the penguins (whose current population is tiny thanks to several severe El Nino events some years ago).

In fact all the islands have been suffering population declines in recent years due to weather changes brought on by El Nino events.  These events, which Californian’s are familiar with, are a warming trend in the near-surface water brought on by warm, deep-ocean currents that for unexplained reasons linger beyond the more traditional time frame.  The net result being that fish/krill/plankton that various animals require are not in sufficient abundance and thus the animals starve to death.  On land the effects can be a more pronounced/longer wet season which also results in food shortages, surprisingly.  In recent years there have also been some droughts which have affected the populations of birds and land iguanas.

This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of fearless animals to watch but there are a lot less of some of them than when Darcie was last lucky enough to go (20 or so years ago).  Some of that just had to do with the time of year she was there relative to this trip (she went in late June/July with her family all those many years ago) and some of it is climate change (either random or man-made).

The snorkeling was excellent, the water clarity is wonderful, the water is at this time of year still quite warm (24C/75F ish) and fish, turtles and sea lions abound.  As mentioned there are a few penguins on some of the islands and these can be seen “flying” around under water if you are lucky.  On our final day I saw a Galapagos Cormorant (flightless cormorant on it’s way to becoming a new type of penguin) flying under water (no photo though).

All in all a great experience.