GALAPAGOS! FINALLY!!

It was a very excited bunch who flew out of Quito on Sunday morning.

Hmmm, that doesn’t really convey it.

We were more like five saveloys that had been cooked too long and we about to bust out of their skins.

Our first treat for the day was the stunning view of Quito's mountains from outside our hotel room.

Accompanied by Johanna, we grabbed taxis to the airport and enjoyed a quick breakfast in the airport café before gathering for a team photo.

Here we are, live and in colour!

Back row, L to R: Simon, Claire, Ed and Sean

Front row, L to R: Natalie, Johanna.

Once in the air, flying the Galapagos’ own airline, Aerogal (complete with iguana motif), we were speechless as Quito’s volcanoes revealed themselves among the clouds. Well, speechless, that is, except for a certain person screeching at her husband to get the camera out, quick!

We had a brief stop in Gyaquil to collect more passengers, but we weren’t allowed off the plane. But in what seemed like no time at all, we were treated to our first glimpse of the mystical, the magical, the enchanted Galapagos:

Landing on the island of San Cristobel (a tad more populated than expected), we were SUPER EXCITED!!

So much so, that we even got excited about the mosaic animal sculptures that greeted us once outside the terminal.

Unfortunately, no one else greeted us.

Hmmmm. Where was our tour guide? Marooned like five lost sheep, who until now had been champing at the bit (excuse the mixed animal similes/metaphors), we stood forlornly until a guide from another company approached us. He assured us our Intrepid guide would be with us soon.

I felt a bit tetchy, like this was taking the gloss off the Galapagos. What kind of racket was Intrepid running? Then tetchy turned to huffy. I mentally began drafting a strongly worded letter to Intrepid. Yes, I was morphing into a 1950s Headmistress. Scary.

And then our guide, Oswaldo, arrived, and I got even more huffy. A toned (OK, totally ripped), tanned young bloke, sporting mirror aviator shades, Oswaldo came across more as Mr Universe than Mr Intrepid Tour Guide. Barely pausing to apologise for his lateness, he introduced himself and then assured us some transportation would be following.

“What a complete wanker”, was my initial reaction. (I think it was the aviator shades. They reminded me of our complete poser of a canoeing leader at Disneyland). Snippily, I replied, “Well, it might be a good idea if WE introduced ourselves: I’m Natalie”.

The others duly gave their names – all beginning to look a little frightened of me - and then we waited for a second car that never arrived. It ended up with us all piling into the one ute, with Simon and Sean riding in the tray with the luggage. And for those of us inside the car, the seatbelts didn’t work.

The moral of this little story – well, two actually:

-         First impressions are not always correct

-         Sometimes you (I) have to chill out and bend a little. What the Galapagos lacked in efficiency, it more than made up for in charm.

And as it turned out, Oswaldo was a keen, highly intelligent, dedicated, caring, environmentally and socially conscious tour guide. In conversation over subsequent days, it transpired that he had risen from humble beginnings on the island of Isabella, duly honing his English and taking every opportunity to teach himself as much as he could about his beloved islands, before successfully competing against a field of hundreds for a select handful of tour guide positions. His ultimate ambition is to become mayor of Isabella, so that he can use the position to implement positive environmental and social changes within his community.

And riding in the tray of the ute? The boys loved it. And there wasn’t any traffic to worry about. The Galapagos communities are refreshingly laid back and relaxed, harking back to earlier times, unshackled by issues of heavy OH&S liability.

But you don’t really want to know about that. You want to know about the animals, right?

Well, we didn’t have long to wait. Less than five minutes later we were dropped off outside the gates of an unassuming hostel:

(Hostel rooms above; below is view from balcony)

We giggled as the manager assigned us to our rooms, with Ed and Claire, Sean and I being allocated the “matrimonial suites”. Said matrimonial suite appeared to be under assault from a plague of crickets, but no matter. We dumped our bags (hoping the crickets wouldn’t find their way in) and then it was off into town. Oswaldo enthusiastically assured us that we would have our first Galapagos Wildlife Encounter as we turned the corner onto the main street.

At first we thought he meant this:

But as we rounded the corner, we saw that he had been in earnest.

This was Avenue Charles Darwin, the esplanade along the front of the town centre. And it was totally taken over by Galapagos fur seals.

We had to maintain at least a metre’s distance from them, but they were beastly careless as to our presence. Laconic and idle, they lolled around as though they owned the place. Which they did.

We even saw babies having a drink from their mothers.

According to Oswaldo, the seals even get amongst the playground action with the local children, with some even taking their turns on the slippery-dip!

The salty, accosting smell of oily fish emanated off their bodies, and the air was rent with their belches and growls, and occasional barks.

Out in the harbour, we could even see some seals lying in the moored boats, having jumped cheekily aboard. Apparently they’re not too fastidious in their toilet habits, and can make quite a mess for an unsuspecting captain to later deal with!

Very excited to be on the avenue named after the great man!

And the seals weren’t the extent of the wildlife – I saw my first Galapagos Finch!! I was to become totally obsessed with photographing the finches, because I wanted to see if I could determine for myself the subtle differences in their morphology between the islands. This was a common [NAME] finch.

Oh, and just for the puritan biologists: turns out that it wasn’t the finches that put Darwin onto his theory of evolution. Yes, he collected a bunch of finches while cruising around the islands, but the silly man neglected to tag them according to their island of origin, so he was kind of screwed when it came to inferring anything about divergent morphology as a result of geographic isolation. Damn! No, it was in fact the humble mockingbird that tipped Darwin off, but it was the finches who stole the glory.

This was an amusing episode. The young seal was lying on one of the cement benches that surrounded the trees. Suddenly, an older seal decided that, damn it, SHE wanted to lie RIGHT THERE. So she unceremoniously shoved the littler seal off and claimed the position for herself:

And you can tell they’re really, really not bothered by our presence. It was more like they were thinking “Oh, brother, not another bunch of tourists!”

We headed to an unobtrusive little restaurant down one of the streets off the Avenue Charles Darwin, where we were ushered upstairs to our table for lunch, and the staff rolled out a HUGE feast of soup and chicken. It was delicious, but I was grateful that the activity for the afternoon was mountain biking – I needed some exercise! I asked Oswaldo if Ecuadorian food was usually so hearty, since every meal we’d been served since our arrival had been rich and generous (and delicious, so you couldn’t even leave any if you wanted to!) He assured us it was, but was equally earnest in assuring us that we would be getting so much exercise, he guaranteed we wouldn’t gain any weight!

  Darwin is our Hero!

Some of the sights on Charles Darwin Ave. The above ark is actually a souvenir shop. The below is yet another example of the animal sculptures adorning the town streets.

After returning to our hostel for a quick change, we were driven up to the highlands of the island to the town of El Progreso. We had a short walk to the observatory, where there was a stunning lookout with panoramic views. Oswaldo pointed out Isla de Lobos – a tiny little island with gorgeous lagoon and white sand beach, where we would be snorkelling the following morning. Oswaldo promised encounters with turtles, rays and sealions, and we all started hopping with excitement. He also pointed out the formidable and dramatic Leon Dormido, or Kicker Rock, which looked like something straight out of “Famous Five Go To Smugglers’ Rock” – a boot-shaped monolith side by side with a jagged sheet of narrow limestone erupting from the depths, with a narrow channel between the two formations. The excitement ramped up even higher when Oswaldo told us this would be our second snorkelling destination for tomorrow – and that we had a good chance of encountering hammerhead sharks!

You can just see Kicker Rock in the distance in the above shot.

 Adventure lieth thataway!

We returned to the car park to collect our mountain bikes At this point I thanked God, Allah and all the bicycling deities that we had done so much cycling in San Francisco, which meant that I had a) reasonable confidence, and b) some understanding of American bike gears. After a quick tutorial, we had to demonstrate our competency in the carpark. Of course the boys immediately fanged off, picking the wheel and showing off, while Claire and I gamely wobbled around the perimeter. Nearby, there was a basketball court, on which a group of lads were playing a unique hybrid soccer-style game that Oswaldo explained was called “Ecua-ball”! Despite the fact that the game looked rather interesting, Claire and I stayed focused enough to pass the bike test and nut out the gears, so with no further ado, we headed off downhill!!

We made various stops along the way, for traffic to pass, or for Oswaldo to point out unique flora – such as raspberries growing alongside orange and guava trees! The climate of the Galapagos highlands provides unique conditions allowing both temperate and cool climate fruit to flourish. As we cruised past little townships, many rather merry young men called out to us, mostly with proposals of marriage directed at the honeymooning Claire, and yours truly. Oswaldo explained that, being Sunday, many of the men were still either drunk or hungover from the Saturday night before. Nice!

Finally we levelled out (somewhat to my relief – freewheeling downhill on rather rugged and narrow roads, without hitting the brakes and sending myself over the handlebars was something of a challenge to this biking novice), and soon we arrived at a beautiful sandy beach on the south-east side of the island. The idea had been to snorkel with the sealion colony, and we’d hopefully brought our gear along in our accompanying car, but the surf turned out to be too rough to contemplate going in safely.

But there was absolutely no disappointment, as it was more than thrilling enough to be able to walk among the huge sealion colony, and to observe these beautiful animals so very closely.

 The crab was a bonus!

I remembered visiting Seal Bay on Kangaroo Island as a little girl, and being able to get very close to the seals, but these days it's ranger-led tours only on a boardwalk, keeping well away from the animals. Of course, this is all for the best, but it was lovely to be reminded that there was such a thing as an honour system. All of us were so grateful to be in such close proximity to all the creatures, that it was the very least we could do to obey the 1m perimeter rule. One metre was nothing! And the sealions didn’t seem to be at all bothered by our presence – with the possible exception of the alpha male, who left us in no doubt as to who was boss, as he waddled among his harem, barking fiercely......

.....before taking to the water to do more of the same:

We saw blue-footed boobies diving like torpedoes into the water after fish....

 ...and these dear little yellow birds:

The whole place was just a photographic paradise. One of the reasons I’ve taken so long to punch out this blog entry has been trying to cull the thousands of photos to a manageable quotient. We all simply went nuts taking pictures, because we’d never had the privilege of being this close to wild animals before, without them being frightened by our presence.

The only sad part was this poor little baby.

We were all taking photos of him when Oswaldo observed how thin he was, and wondered aloud if he had been deserted by his mother. He pointed out that the nearby female was not his mother, and furthermore was covering her nipples with her flipper to discourage the poor little pup from suckling from her.

That’s the thing about nature – it always has its tragic side. I so wanted to help the little pup, but you just can’t interfere.

As if the whole place wasn’t photogenic enough, twilight descended during our beach foray, so we all took squillions more photos!

It's just so much fun being a sealion!

The wildlife was nothing short of prolific. Oswaldo found us a hermit crab, and we saw a frigate-bird, complete with stunning red (inflatable) throat.

Thank goodness for Nikon lenses!

We returned to our “support vehicle" and collected our bikes. Claire was a tad tired, so she cruised back in the car, and kindly looked after our camera for us. She took the opportunity to take some highly flattering shots of our cycling efforts!

Sean doing it with ease.

Maniacal cycling skills. I haz dem.

Oswaldo was always smiling!

Simon looks a tad startled.

Ed flying casual.

Who would have thought it after such a humungous lunch, but after all the fresh air and exercise, I was starving hungry, and eager to devour some more Ecuadorian cuisine. I didn’t have to wait long. After a brief stop at the tour office to sort out wetsuits for tomorrow (yay!), it was on to our hostel for a quick freshen-up, before we headed into town and upstairs to an outdoor balcony table. Dinner was nothing short of spectacular: a chicken roulade with rice and veggies, followed by a caramel panna cotta with coconut and strawberries.

YUM!!!!

The Galapagos: delivering on both nature and gastronomy. And it was only Day One!!!!