In The Footsteps of a Salopian ...

A totally ridiculous place - I was only there minutes before I was on the point of tears at how amazing it was. Admittedly the fact that I hadn´t been to sleep and had only a very few hours earlier reclaimed my rightful gender probably wasn´t helping matters. However, tiredness and emotionalness aside, the Galapagos truly are incredible.

From the barren red earth of Isla Baltra when you fly in, to the entertaining souvenir T-shirts at the airport, to the inumerably streams of diving birds plunging into the depths and reminding me vividly of sitting on the beach in Bequia, everything was captivating.

I somehow ended up with a great cabin, one of the best on the boat in fact, with two walls which were entirely window so I could fall asleep and wake up with the sea gliding past tight next to me. Every attention had been payed to detail, and I couldn´t stop grinning with smug excitement at how lucky I was to be there.

Trip 1:

Wow. North Seymour, like Baltra, is utterly flat -

a slab of tectonic plate which has been pushed up to sit above the surface. The vegetation is dry and scrubby, but the sense of barrenness goes no further. Bright reddy/orange crabs scuttled away from me as I left the boat and I was immediately hypnotised by the gracefully enormity of the pelicans as they patrolled the surf, and the balletic perfection of the frigates´dramatic dives. I was so absorbed that I practically walked into the little black marine iguana at my feet - but while I was admiring him I suddenly noticed that the beach was littered with lazing baby sealions, irridescent with velvet wrinkles. A yellow-faced Baltra land iguana basked motionless in the sun as if he was put there solely to face the camera, as the blue-footed boobies whistled and honked to each other in playful courtship. It was quite impossible to take in each new wonder before being distracted by the next - the whole place as alive with creatures, living on each other´s doorsteps, without a hint of concern over each other´s presence of ours. The fearlessness of the animals is something it is utterly impossible to prepare yourself for. Every ingrained habit is telling you to approach them with caution, but more often than not they just get bored of waiting and run up to inspect you! It´s hard to convince yourself that it is real - that you genuinely are face to face with a wild sealion; genuinely are standing in the middle of a mating ritual with horny extrovert birds weaving a dance of seduction around you, oblivious to your presence. Our guide´s expert commentary brought everything even more to life, and it really felt like I was learning, discovering - literally living an episode of ´Planet Earth´!

Trip 2:

I am getting ahead of myself, but I just have to mention a great moment, which left me with an inane grin for hours. I came in off the dingy after our afternoon visit, changed and drifted the 3 metres to the lounge/bar where there was a bowl of pimento stuffed olives, a plate of cheese and salami, another or Ritz crackers, and a cold beer. And did I mention that the Gypsy Kings were gently strumming away on the stereo while we rocked at anchor in the dark bay? Bliss on board as well as on land.

That day´s highlight (and the highlight of many subsequent days in fact), so fabulous that I laughed the whole time it was happening, was swimming with sealions. We snorkelled for perhaps 20 minutes and although the scenery was pretty, it was simply too cold to be properly absorbing and a lot of people got out of the water pretty quickly. When only two or three of us were left, three sealions found us and swam a hypnotising dance around us. They would twist and turn, dive and leap, hurtle out of hte deep to within inches of your mask, then glide past you to double back underneath and stare at you with a very self-congratulatory expression. They loved you to play back too. I started diving down with them, twisting around and doubling back, trying to hold their gaze while they outmanoevered me and it just made them more ambitious - swimming closer then darting away more quickly, diving deeper, writhing around overexcitedly infront of me as they wove a path around each other and us. It was magical.

Besides that, more beautiful scenery - the turquiose waters,

warm rounded banks of baslat rock and yellow sands of the previous day gave way to dramatic cliffs, gorgeous barrelling left-hand breaks that would have made Dave green, blow holes spouting salt spray 30 metres into the air - and, of course, the profuse and staggering juxtaposition of birds, mammals and reptiles of every shape and size. The boobies are so comical, stamping their rubbery blue feet, and the tentative courtship of young albatrosses, forming the first bonds which will join them for life, is so touching.

Another island:

Punta Espinosa, on Fernandina Island, blew me away. Even after several days of non-stop wildlife spotting and hugely varied scenery, it was just so fabulous that I felt like I had arrived in the Galapagos anew. An irregular. messy stretch of coastline formed where lave flows have pushed out into the sea, it is lapped by beautiful turquoise waters which alternately foam up against the rocks or flow inwards to fill rock pools and tranquil coves. Against a beautiful backdrop of golden-brown volcanoes which glowed in the afternoon sun, the water was alive with pelicans, boobies, frigates and comical flightless cormorants whose silly stunted wings look much less daft and pathetic when you learn that they can dive to 35 metres. THIRTY FIVE METRES!! I felt pretty chuffed when I did that with a scuba tank on my back. Closer to the shore, the marine iguanas wove their way in and out of the surf or basked in sun-drenched piles on the rocks. Away to my left, sealions rested beneath the shade of a mangrove, while a couple of penguins bobbed about on top of a wave. While the exquisite orange and turquise cracs scuttled with the lava lizards around my feet, I tried to absorb the moment. Within 10 metres of where I was standing were at least five endemic species, along with a hord of other wildlife - all utterly unafraid and happily going about their lives against a backdrop of black lava, golden sand, green mangroves, turquoise waters and dramatic, sweeping volcanoes. I could have stayed there for days. To cap it all, a little way along the shore, we witnessed the most beautiful and captivating courtship display yet. Two cormorants, first on land sang, flapped and rubbed beaks, and then on water swam an exquisite synchronised dance, circling around one another, bobbing and weaving, and intertwining their necks. They were totally oblivious to the playful interference of a young sealion and they must have carried on for ten minutes. It was utterly enchanting.

I am aware that I have been sickeningly poetic in trying to describe my experiences there over the last week, but it is impossible not to be. Whatever preconceptions or expectations I had about the Galapagos, nothing could compare to the experience of actually being there. It is difficult to say exactly why it was so wonderful - the landscape, the climate, even the animals themselves are not that exceptional - I think it is simply the fearlessness of the creatures. The opportunity it provides to witness nature as it was supposed to be - as it is when humans are not there.

written by

Alex Kent on November 2, 2007 from Galapagos, Ecuador

from the travel blog: On the Varieties of Nature

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Hi Alex,
Nice to hear you are doing OK, sounds like some place. Love the picture with the giant turtles. We had to make do with seeing them in Greece, which was for me quite something. Anyway you look after yourself best wishes for your onward travel.

written by Guy Hamilton on November 14, 2007

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