WanderingWhy…

So much to say about the Galapagos and yet it’s really hard to put the whole experience into words. I’ll try and let the pictures do most of the talking for this post. I apologize if this makes the page load slow.

I’m really learning to appreciate wildlife on this trip. It’s one thing to see animals in the zoo, but to step outside your room and see monkeys or macaws in the trees is completely different. Or, in the case of the Galapagos, treading carefully not to step on an iguana or sleeping sea lion. Busch Gardens or Animal Kingdom just don’t even come close.

The Galapagos is unique in this sense. Some people may wonder about the impact of tourism on these islands but from what I saw, it seems they are doing the best they can to minimize any sort of “damage.” Only 3% of the islands are inhabited and visited—really incredible considering all you can see in that 3%.

All boats follow a set itinerary assigned to them by the park and they cannot deviate from it. They can only be on certain islands at certain times. The guide carries a big responsibility for the passengers and can incur heavy fines (jail time in some instances) if he allows anything to happen that should not. For example, we took a panga (dinghy) from the boat onto the islands each day. The ride was usually only 2 or 3 minutes, but if everyone on the panga did not wear a life jacket and we were caught the guide would bear some heavy responsibility. If someone wandered off the marked trails one the islands—again, the guide’s butt.

I hope I’ve banished any fears my tree-hugging friends may have—Go! The islands are very well cared for.

The golden rule of the park is: No one is allow to touch the animals. Maybe because of this, they have little fear of people. You can’t touch them, but you can get damn close to them. And there are a lot of them. About the only thing on my wish list I didn’t encounter was a whale sighting.

Twenty minutes off the plane and before we even boarded the boat there were sea lions sleeping on the benches in the waiting area of the docks.

On the first island we walked along the beach and, not being familiar with the environment, nearly stepped on several marine iguanas.

Not related and much larger, the land iguanas all like to smile for pictures:

Our first night these ladies came aboard for a visit

It’s the season for the little guys to join the world. This mom had just given birth to this pup maybe an hour before we got there.

The sea-lions were not the only ones multiplying, the frigate birds were nesting too:

A favorite of the islands is the blue-footed booby bird. Aside from the name which provides plenty of fodder for t-shirt jokes, I didn’t understand the hype until I saw them—really entertaining. They are goofy looking birds. They look a bit cross eyed and when they walk they waddle and lift their blue feet high in the air to show off to the ladies. You know what the ladies say about guys with blue feet. Part of the mating ritual is to offer sticks and small stones to the female. I tried this with Dawn but it didn’t work–then again I guess it did when the stone was sparkling… or maybe it was my feet.

The giant tortoise is probably the symbol of the Galapagos along with Charles Darwin. Unfortuately, these hardy guys are on the endangered list and not all that prominent. They can live for up to a year without food or water (with food and water their lifespan is nearly 200 years) which made them a nice food source for sailors to store in the hulls of ships back in the day. The sailors were hungry and the turtle population is still trying to recover with help from the Charles Darwin research station in Puerto Ayora. We did take a trip to the highlands to see them in the wild–really bizarre to see a farm full of wild tortoises.

If you’ve been following this blog, you may remember my OCD episode in trying to find sea-turtles in Central America. That was fun but I never imagined what we would see on the islands and in the water here. Black turtles coming ashore and nesting:

Snorkeling with them up close:

Life underwater is just as amazing as on land—maybe more so. I’ve done some diving but never even came close to seeing what we did while snorkeling. I can’t imagine what a dive trip would be like… schools of hammerhead sharks I was told (and I believe it too). But snorkeling with sea-lions is damn cool as well:

We did a family trip to New Zealand a few years ago. Some of us started a bit of a quest to see penguins while we where there but never had any success. I heard you could see penguins in the Galapagos so that became my fixation to drive Dawn crazy for 8 days. We finally spotted one:

That was great but then the guide went and raised my hopes and said it was possible to snorkel with them on the next island. We spotted several there, but so did another group of snorkelers and the bastards scared all my penguinos away before I got there.

At this point there was one day left on the boat and I was bumming a bit having missed my opportunity at the one island known for penguins. We docked at the next island and Dawn came to report there was a penguin spotted off the back of the boat—3 seconds later I was in the water and trying to get the little guy to come off the rocks for a swim. The animals really could care less about humans, and the penguin made that known by just shaking his butt and pooping.

Eventually the pudgy little guy joined us for a swim and led us to his friends.

I got back on the boat and could not wipe the smile off my face. The trip was everything I ever dreamed it would be. Now if I could just spot a whale….