Travels to the Galápagos

Travels to the Galápagos

Wednesday, February 13, 2002

Santa Cruz

Overnight we sailed around the northern tip of Isabella, down the east side, crossing the equator twice more on route to Academy Bay on the south side of Santa Cruz. This was our longest single trip segment. We saw bioluminescence in the ship's wake again, pale and diffuse with bright green sparks.

We rode Zodiacs to the Charles Darwin Research Station. Ironically, Darwin himself never visited the site of the Research Station, nor even the island on which it resides, Santa Cruz (or Indefatigable in his day). Marine iguanas swam lazily in Academy Bay, and by now it seemed in the ordinary course of things to see a few marine iguanas at our landing spot, completely ignoring us.

Puerto Ayora, where the station is located, is the largest town in the Galápagos. I've heard different estimates of its population: one of the estimates was 10,000.

Puerto Ayora is part of the three percent (3%) of inhabited areas in the Galápagos that were "grandfathered in" when the remaining 97% was made a national park in 1959, the centennial of the publication of Origin of Species.

Well, Santa Cruz is certainly a departure from what we've been seeing elsewhere in the islands. In Academy Bay were several yachts at anchor, along with a few tour boats, and an Ecuadorean naval vessel (which was said, right or wrong, to represent half of the navy). Pelicans and blue-footed boobies searched for breakfast. The latter are particularly striking as they plunge-dive for fish.

One was immediately struck by how green was everything in the immediate vicinity of Academy Bay, due to the mangroves on the shore, and continuing inland a short way. Right at the shoreline were piles of black basalt that looked as if they had been artificially placed. Of course, they were entirely natural.

The town of Puerto Ayora is divided by class, with the newer, more expensive "other side" to the west. With no roads, living there is somewhat inconvenient - purchasing groceries, transporting children to school -- all must be done by boat.

A walk of a few hundred yards from the dock took us to the Charles Darwin Research Station. There is much information about the Darwin Research Station on the web, so I'll be brief here. Yes, we saw Solitario Jorge (Lonesome George) and his two Wolf Volcano girlfriends. [add hyperlink re tale of Lonesome George] No, there have been no new developments concerning Sr. Jorge.

We visited the tortoise breeding pens, as well as the younger tortoises, who are kept separated by subspecies, and are covered by screens at night to keep rats out until their shells are tough enough to withstand attack (2-3 years). The tortoises are released back into the wild at about five years old. There is a very new land iguana breeding project. One male is hatched for every two females, approximately the natural ratio. (If I remember correctly, the temperature during incubation determines the sex of the tortoise.)

One saddleback tortoise stretched out his long neck to bite off some cactus to eat. The largest ones can reach up as high as five feet (150 cm). Lava lizards also ran through the tortoise pens. A current project is attempting biological control of the imported cottony scale cushion insects with their natural predator, a type of ladybug. We had seen the former, infesting some mangroves, at the Darwin Research Station dock. We did not see the latter, who are still under tight containment until their release, expected to be soon

We were allowed to get very close to a group of six large feeding male tortoises at CDRS. They are fed three days a week. They were chomping on what looked like stalks from banana trees. Two started feeding on the same stalk. When they realized this, a showdown ensued. Both raised their heads as high as they could, which is fairly high for saddleback tortoises. They opened their mouths, and waved their heads a bit. The higher tortoise wins. The loser promptly pulled his head into his shell, emitting a hiss as air was forced from his lungs. Then he turned and left to find other food.

We saw Jorge drink water, a process exactly as described by C.D. in the Voyage of the Beagle. [Hyperlink to C.D. quote to be added here.]

It may have just been my imagination, but it seemed to me that the finches and lava lizards in Puerto Ayora were more skittish than we have encountered on other islands. We also saw Galápagos mockingbirds at CDRS.

We learned that pigs have recently been unofficially declared to be removed from Santiago - after 18 months with no activity, it would be declared official.

A method that is being used to eradicate goats on some of the islands is rather interesting. After natives hunt as many as possible, "Judas goats" are released. A Judas goat is a female with horns painted orange and fitted with a radio collar. Unfamiliar females are accepted by groups of goats (males aren't), so after some time she is tracked down by hunters, and the rest of the group is shot. Then she is used to start the process over again.

We left the Station and walked down the main drag of Puerto Ayora, called Charles Darwin Avenue, to buses waiting to carry us to the highlands. The human-inhabited portions of Santa Cruz, both in Puerto Ayora and portions inland, are generally similar to what one would see on just about any small, tourist-oriented Caribbean town: T-shirt shops, hotels of varying quality, dive shops, some poorer areas lying back from the main drag, agricultural areas inland, etc. The whole island was very green compared to others we've visited, more so as we ascended the highlands. A postcard that my wife sent by regular mail from Puerto Ayora to our dog arrived fairly quickly, on Feb. 26.

To my untutored eye, much of the greenery we saw in the forests and fields along the road had a "weedy" appearance, as if it somehow didn't belong. A guide confirmed that many of the plants we passed were introduced species. E.g., elephant grass, which grew tall, appeared overgrown and far too thick.

We went through a small town in the highlands, Bellavista. More-or-less in the middle of nowhere we stopped at Altair, a nice establishment vaguely reminiscent of things European, and having an open air restaurant where we ate lunch, and a small swimming pool. It was very pretty, but much of its attraction derives from non-native plants. In its setting of the inhabited island of Santa Cruz, it's hard to say it doesn't belong. But I must say that I prefer the pristine state of some of the uninhabited islands over inhabited Santa Cruz.

After a very nice meal of grilled chicken, the kids joined some of the guides and other guests for a game of volleyball. Then we traveled by bus over the dirt roads farther inland. The bus returned to the main paved road after a while, as we traveled to Los Gemelos.

The weather today was hot and partly cloudy, but cloudier and a little cooler upland. Still far from arctic - everything is relative. Even though the uplands are quite green, one of the locals commented that they needed rain. (I'm not sure whether that was an expression of current need, or a general observation.

We haven't encountered any biting insects all week. We did see some introduced wasps in Puerto Ayora.

After Altair, on the road to Los Gemelos ("the twins"), we went through the third and last town in Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, a very small, agricultural village. Just before that, we passed some sort of National Park checkpoint. Carmen, our guide, spoke briefly to the park representative, and all was well. There was much agriculture along this road: cattle, bananas, coffee, and I'm not sure what else. This well-maintained, paved road crosses the island north-to-south, connecting Puerto Ayora to Baltra airport (together with a short ferry ride.)

Los Gemelos are twin craters, formed by the collapse of magma chambers. One was circular, and one elliptical. They were hundreds of feet across, the circular one perhaps 400 feet deep, the elliptical one perhaps 300 feet. The sides were very steep, and showed layers from different volcanic events. Some plants grew on the walls, and many on the floor. Non-native quinine trees grow in the craters.

At the rim of the circular crater we saw a yellow warbler, small ground finches, warbler finches, and a Galápagos dove. The dove has beautiful bright blue eye rings, and a pink/green iridescence of variable color on the sides of the neck.

We hiked a short trail on the side of the larger, elliptical pit. Parasitic cones dotted the landscape. The hike went through a Scalesia forest, with at least the third very different Scalesia species we have encountered so far (possibly more, at least three). (The Scalesia forest is sometimes colloquially called the "Broccoli forest" for the shape of the trees.) The Galápagos tend to have few orchid species, since orchids are dependent on pollinators not likely to cross the ocean at the same time as the plant. But one species of orchid was growing on a Scalesia tree here. Small ground finches, small tree finches, woodpecker finches, and yellow warblers were both seen and heard. Also Galápagos flycatchers, and vermillion flycatchers - males of the latter are bright red, and are very beautiful. There was a type of creeper related to the passion fruit, with pairs of green leaves resembling butterflies spaced about 18 inches apart on a slender vine.

The bus then took us to a private farm that lies on a wild tortoise migratory route. The tortoises go there to eat, and to drink water from a few shallow pools. On the way in to the farm, we saw male vermillion flycatchers again. Although we were primarily there to see tortoises, other birds we saw included white-cheeked pintail ducks, cattle egrets, the introduced smooth-billed Ani, and indeterminate finches. Tortoises are especially fond of introduced grasses, which they find very tasty. The carapaces of these tortoises were dome-shaped. We saw in the fields (both on our own and with the aid of directions from others) ten large ones (probably males), one medium-sized one, and some small one. Also indeterminate finches, and two more vermillion flycatchers. The tortoises again acted as Darwin described, apparently deaf, but pulling in their heads with a hiss/sigh if they spot a human too close. [Add hyperlink to Darwin's description.] Why a large tortoise should fear humans when other animals here do not is not clear to me. Even the wide scale capture of tortoises by whalers and sailors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would not seem to explain this, as drawing in the head would hardly seem to offer any selective advantage against being hauled off to a boat. Perhaps it's an ancestral characteristic, inherited from smaller forebears who had reason to fear larger creatures; a trait that was simply never lost, even when it no longer bore on fitness. Perhaps it helps juveniles avoid predators, and the trait is just maintained in adults.

On the way out of the farm, a small tortoise crossed the dirt driveway. It apparently found the tire rut much to its liking, as it turned to follow it. Some of the passengers became impatient, and asked whether the Park rules might be bent just a little, by lifting the tortoise off the drive, but Carmen would hear none of it. Before too long, although the tortoise was still traveling in the tire rut, the bus driver decided he had enough room off the road to pass our chelonian friend on the right. We learned that the sign we had seen at the exit from the main road had indeed been serious: "Danger. Tortoise Crossing" (Actually, in Spanish).

On the road back to Puerto Ayora, we saw more weedy-looking growth - huge stands of tall elephant grass, trees (probably non-native) topping the prickly pear cactus and crowding them considerably, vines turning up the cactus "trees," and exotic decorative plants. I am no expert. I have not seen what a pristine Galápagos highland looks like, nor for that matter any highland other than in Santa Cruz. Nor do I know what the highlands even in Santa Cruz look like once one gets away from the few roads. But my gut feeling is that at least the Santa Cruz highlands, at least near the road, appear to be highly disturbed as compared to their condition before human arrival. The pristine, and more nearly pristine, parts of the islands are far more becoming. We humans have messed up enough of this planet. At least a few places should be left intact, a reminder of what the world once was like, a living natural history museum.

A botanist from CDRS who spoke to us on board before dinner confirmed these speculations. Most of the humid/agriculture zones on the currently or formerly inhabited islands are highly disturbed botanically. Arid zone are less disturbed. The Los Gemelos area is relatively free from introduced plants. (Although introduced quinine trees do grow there.)

After dinner, Ecuadorian dancing and music were provided by the group Galápagos Identidad.

Lindblad sometimes makes empty cabins available to researchers, teachers, or locals at no cost. Today we took on board a couple of CDRS researchers and a couple of National Park workers at Santa Cruz for a half-week.

On Santa Cruz we saw a carpenter bee, and a painted locust, but by now I can't remember exactly what part of the island.

Map of the Islands (from the Emory Law School website)