Galapagos: The Enchanted Islands

Die inheemse bevolking van die Ekwatoriale streek van Suid Amerika het destyds, meer 
as 'n 1000 jaar gelede, die Stille Oseaan aangedurf en wes geseil op soek na nuwe wêrelde.
Na menigte maande van see vaar het dié wat die gevaarlike reis oorleef het terug gekom met die eienaardigste, mees eksotiese stories...
Verhale van 'n magiese plek, wat skuil in die vergete vlaktes van die stille oseaan, 
'n Plek waar vuur summier uit die aarde gespoeg word...
'n Plek van seemonsters en gekleurde drake...en van reusagtige lewende rotse wat die betowerde landskappe ronddwaal...
'n Plek met so 'n magdom voëls dat hul op tye selfs die son kon verduister...
Dit is 'n plek skoon uit 'n feeverhaal, 'n plek van drome wat jy saans vir jou kinders van vertel...Vandag ken ons die plek as die Galapagos Eilande...

Galapagos Islands

After spending a night in the balmy Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city we headed to the airport to catch our local flight, a 1000 km journey west, to the archipelago of Galapagos! 

Now after having watched numerous documentaries and wildlife shows throughout our lives about the islands, and having spoken recently to many people who have been there, it was difficult to contain our excitement, and for that matter our expectations...

It was a short hour and a half flight, across one time zone, before we arrived on Baltra island, or South Seymour, which is a small desolate island just north of one of the main ones, Santa Cruz. From the airport we took a bus to the harbor where we boarded a small ferry across the narrow Itabaca channel to Santa Cruz island. There we again jumped on a bus that took us across the island to the Southern port town of Puerto Ayora...

We were recommended a good place to stay by a girl in our dormitory in Guayaquil, so decided to first go find it and check in before exploring the town. Fortunately the town is not that big so we found it within 20 minutes or so...Petrel Hostel - nice, clean and relatively cheap place to stay on a trip that is notoriously expensive! 

So there are two ways to explore the Galapagos - there's a "land-based" option, generally thought to be cheaper, and then there's a multi-day cruise option, which can vary greatly in cost. The cruises are normally booked in advance but we heard prior to coming to the island that the best way to do it is to try find last minute spots on these boats and hopefully get on at a lower price. The big advantage being that with the cruises your get to see way more, it's your transportation, accommodation plus three meals a day...so while they're still very expensive they do make a strong case...

We thus decided to hit the booking agencies, they're all over town, and see if we can wrangle some half decent bunks on a semi-nice boat at a reasonable price! After about three hours of scurrying around town, we managed to book a 6 day, 5 night cruise on the Floreana Yacht, at a very decent yet still hair-raising price...did I mention the currency of Ecuador is the US Dollar...sigh...:)

Our route is depicted above: Start at the north end of Santa Cruz, close to Baltra, sail a short distance west to a place called playa las bachas (1), still on Santa Cruz. That evening we cruise to the north eastern corner of Southern Seymour, or Baltra (2) where we will spend the night docked in the bay. The next morning we take a short ride to North Seymour island (3) to see the bird-life and also snorkel around the island, in the afternoon we head back to the western side of Santa Cruz to visit a place called Cerro Dragon (4) or dragon hill. During our second night we cruise back to Puerto Ayora (5) where we will remain docked for the next day as we travel up to the highlands to see the great giant Galapagos tortoises in the wild (6)...That evening we cruise south to the island of Floreana (7) where we will spend the entire next day, including a snorkel at the famous corona del diablo (8). Over night we will head east to Española island (9) where we will spend our fifth day, which will also include a snorkel at the smaller Gardner Island just off Gardner Bay (10). For our final day we head to the south eastern island of San Cristobal (11), where we will spend the day and in the afternoon catch a ferry back to Puerto Ayora (12).

We still had a day to spare before our cruise boat left so we decided to head out to a popular nearby beach, called Tortuga Bay, with its picturesque white-sand beaches and crystal clear blue water...

There we also had our first encounter with the native marine iguanas, their spiky dragon-like skin almost perfectly camouflaged with the black volcanic rocks...

Later that afternoon as we were strolling back to town we could see them swim ashore and crawl out over the white sand, their prehistoric black bodies glistening in the afternoon sun. It was a great introduction to the surreal wildlife present on these remote islands...

The next morning we headed back up north to Baltra island, and mistakenly were told to wait at the airport. Fortunately our guide for the cruise, Victor, surmised what happened and sent someone to come get us. We disembarked from the Itabaca channel and boarded our Yacht the Floreana! 

Floreana Yacht

We were so excited to start our cruise! Another group pulled out the last minute so it was just the four of us and a French couple which was great because we now practically had a 15 person yacht to ourselves! And not that I'm an expert in yachts or anything but I thought the Floreana was a very nice boat, it might be not as new, or as flashy as the catamarans but you can see its got some character...and that's what you need when you go out to sea! 

Our first outing took us to 'playa las bachas', the first of the many idyllic beaches that we were to enjoy on our Galapagos cruise adventure, and it was also our first snorkeling spot, with a bale of Pacific green sea turtles welcoming us to the Galapagos! 

On the morning of our second day we headed off for a short voyage to North Seymour island, a small rocky island renowned as one of the premier nesting sites for the Frigate birds and the very popular blue footed boobies...not to be confused with the blue nippled boobies found in the chilly waters of South Africa's west coast! 

Galapagos' famous 'blue footed boobies'

It was a terrific morning outing...One of the most fascinating aspects of this place is that the wildlife in the Galapagos, both on land and in the sea, behave in a uniquely peculiar way due to the archipelago's isolation for millions of years. The lack of human contact and successful conservation efforts have ensured that the wildlife do not perceive humans as a threat...Just as an example, a captain on one of the first Spanish galleons to arrive in the Galapagos, remarked in a letter to Spain that "the wildlife on the island must have some form of mental deficiency since they possess no propensity to flee when approached by humans" - it's just that here, they've (fortunately) never learned to be afraid of us...

Which is amazing because you can observe them from relatively close without influencing their behavior at all...It is a truly exhilarating experience to be able to view animals in this way - you literally feel like you're in a David Attenborough documentary...

Male Frigate bird in courtship phase

Just as a side note, the guides do continually stress the importance of adhering to the strict rules of the National park so as to ensure that we do not change the behavior of the animals...and on a side-side note we asked our guide Victor if he has ever worked with Sir David Attenborough...at first he just hit a blank and said no and then about a minute later, mid-sentence, did a 180, "oh Daaaavid, si, I know him well, I've worked with David a couple of times!" - first name basis! Classic! 

After a great hike on North Seymour we headed back to the boat to grab our snorkeling gear and then swam all along the rocky cliffs of the island. The visibility was really good and there was an amazing variety of fish! We thought we might see some big black tip sharks because they were circling our boat not even a hundred meters from where we were snorkeling, but they probably haven't tasted South African prime beef before so they didn't bother to come check us out! ;) 

Kristi looking graceful in the beautiful blue waters
around North Seymour

Later that afternoon at Dragon Hill we saw some really massive old land iguanas, their bright yellow and orange skin showing beautifully in the dry sandy terrain...since these guys have no real predators, they really strut along like they own the place! 

"And it's bad, bad Leroy Brown...the baddest man in the whole damned town..."

The next day at Puerto Ayora, we took about a 45 min drive up to the highlands of Santa Cruz to a place called El Chato. Here we got to see one of Galapagos' most famous specimens, in fact it was from these guys that the archipelago got its name...I'm talking of course about the giant Galapagos tortoises. Back when the first Spanish ships arrived they thought the shells of these giants looked like saddles or 'galaps' which then morphed into Galapagos. Anyway seeing these huge 'ou toppies' (they can grow older than 150 years!) in the wild, slowly going about their business, was really awesome! 

That evening we cruised all the way south to the island of Floreana, where the next morning we made a dry-land outing to Punta Cormorant. Unfortunately not named after the famous flightless Cormorant found in Galapagos but rather after an US Navy ship. We thought we might get lucky, but instead of cormorants the nearby lagoon did have a big group of native Greater Flamingos, standing dashingly on their stilts with their flashing pink attire! 

It was a beautiful warm morning, which we got to enjoy thoroughly on this pristine white beach a couple minutes walk from the lagoon...

Later that morning we headed to the famous snorkeling spot, corona del diablo, or devil's crown, which is an old volcanic crater whose walls have been worn down in certain sections to now vaguely depict the image, from afar, of a rocky crown...

Can't recall what the joke was...But Kristi's the only
one laughing so it definitely was one of mine!

It's really cool to see but the true marvel unfolds only when you peer below the surface! Diving in you are greeted with such an abundance of marine life that its almost overwhelming! 

Swarms and swarms of fish of every size and colour swimming in every direction, massive towers of coral rising from the depths, white tip (reef) sharks eerily cruising by and big spotted eagle rays gliding effortlessly on the ocean currents...

It was really an awesome outing, the Galapagos is the second largest marine conservation area in the world, after the great barrier reef, and this is evident in the healthy stocks of marine life! 

Let sleeping sharks lie...

Later that afternoon we made a visit to the legendary 'post-office bay' also on Floreana island...It's essentially just an old rum barrel with a hood over the top, constructed by the early inhabitants of Floreana as a means to keep in contact with the civilized world. Ships passing by would look in the 'mail box' and check if there's any mail going in their direction and in that way facilitated the delivery of messages, and it's been working like that for over 200 years, and still going! 

Hopefully a South African will drop by here in the next year or so!

Now it's just tourists of course that check the mail and see if there's anything that they can take back to their country to mail. We didn't find any South African addresses, unfortunately, but amazingly we did find a Zimbabwe address! So Simon, whose family still lives there, took up the responsibility to ensure that the mail will find its intended home! We posted a couple of letters too, so hopefully within the next year or so a South African will make a similar visit to post office bay! Ek dink seker eers wanneer die Rand weer versterk...so dalk nooit nie...;)

The (Zoro) Masked Nazca Boobies

For our second last day we visited the southern most island of the archipelago, Española...which is another big nesting site for the masked Nazca boobies, who look like they're wearing Zoro masks,  and the very impressive and large Waved Albatrosses! 

Waved Albatross!

We also got to see another specie of marine iguanas, these guys are slightly pink in colour and the males turn a bright green along the limbs and spine when the hormones kick in...

These nesting grounds are teeming with life, whether it be the adult Albatrosses coming in for a landing like big Boeing airplanes, or the Nazca boobies feeding their chicks and calling their partners for more food! 

"Frikkie bring nog kos die kind is al weer honger!"

The commotion is endless and wonderful, we went to sit at this amazing viewpoint on the edge of the cliffs with a massive blow hole underneath us, where the incoming waves sprout upwards with a thundering force! 

The view was insane, Kristi said that she felt like she could sit there all day among the basking iguanas, watching the Albatrosses soar by and hearing the whistling cries of the boobies all around us...Punta Suarez - definitely one of the highlights of our Galapagos adventure!

That afternoon we headed to a small island just off Española, called Gardner Islet, to see if we could find some sea-lions to play with...and boy did we get to play! The young cubs are really playful and go bananas when they spot you swimming in the water. They wizz by you with such jovial ebullience that after a while you can't help but try to do some underwater back flips and barrel-rolls of your own! Which I think was their entertainment for the day - funny humans...:) Nevertheless it was great fun! 

That evening we cruised east to San Cristobal, which was the last stop on our cruise...We couldn't believe it went by so quickly! San Cristobal has one of the bigger towns in the archipelago, and also a big research center which we visited in the morning and got to learn a lot about the history of the islands as well as their unique geographic and scientific properties! It was very interesting and informative...

Chill time on the Floreana...bottoms up!

We then had to say goodbye to Victor and the Floreana crew after yet another delicious lunch (we sure are going to miss that food), and got dropped off at the town harbor. We had a couple of hours to kill before our speedboat to Santa Cruz was leaving so Simon and I decided to squeeze in one more snorkel while the girls chilled on the beach. He saw a beautiful little spot earlier with some sea-lions and very clear water so we went to check it out...It was really cool, the whole bay was lined with this luminous green algae, which in the sunlight looked like fields of green grass...Also we got to play with the sea-lions again which just never gets old! So a good way to end off a really fun and amazing experience! 

The locals call these islands the enchanted islands and it's easy to see why...

We were mesmerized by the diverse beauty of the islands, by the wonder of how life adapted on these once rocky volcanic outcrops to not only survive but flourish...

Land Iguana - North Seymour

We were amazed to witness the abundance of wildlife act so naturally, so unperturbed by our presence, in their natural environments...

Marine Iguanas basking on the rocks at Espanola Island

It's a magical place and one that definitely should find it's way onto most people's bucket lists! 

Unfortunately all good things have to come to an end and if there was one regret from our side it's that we didn't have more time to spend here because there is still so much to see! Alas, it's back to mainland Ecuador for the four South Africans, for some surf in the rustic seaside village of Montanita...I know, tough life!

Adios Galapagos, we hope that you'll remain enchanted for many years to come!