Galapagos Islands, Ecuador by Mel

Hello from the Galapagos Island,
We arrive here on the 16th of September and we are staying for 2 weeks.
We landed here from Quito, paid our $US600 to be able to enter the Galapagos national park, which is pretty much the whole of the archipelagos. On entrance, it was written that 40% come back here to help with preservation, but we later learned that it has been a few years since any money came back from Quito to the Galapagos. I was happy to pay to help preserve the place, I am not so happy to pay whatever the government in Quito think is better.
We got out of the airport, jumped on a bus which took us to a small canal, jumped onto a boat to get to other side of it then another bus to arrive in Puerto Ayora, the main town of the Santa Cruz island, where we booked a place to stay.
We found our place. It is not quite what we expected, but it will do. As we are staying here for 2 weeks, I wanted somewhere where we could empty our bags a bit and have some space. In the description it was saying a living room and a separate bedroom, which is not the case. We have a big bedroom with all the beds in it but no separate living room. There is an outside area but it is shared with the rest of the place. The kitchen is also outside and pretty minimal. Well, we will adapt!
We settled and then went to have a look at the town. We are on Santa Cruz, one of the main islands of the Galapagos Islands.
A bit of information about the Galapagos Islands: they are located 900km west of the mainland in the Eastern Pacific and are right on the equator, with the norther islands being in the northern hemisphere and the southern islands in the southern hemisphere. They are volcanic islands and the group consists of 18 main islands, 3 smaller islands, and 107 rocks and islets. They are located on the Nazca tectonic plate and are moving with that plate toward the east at a rate of around 6cm a year. They are also located over a magma chamber which explain the number of volcanos of the area.
There is no proof of indigenous life in the island. The lack of fresh water probably explains why nobody lived there permanently. Ecuador claimed the Islands in 1832 and encourage people to start living there. Prior to that, those islands were mainly used by pirates. It was also where Charles Darwin in the 1830s, got more proofs for his theory of evolution. He stayed here for a few weeks and studied the birds and the difference between their beaks, how they evolved to adapt to the type of food they could find. There are a fair few things that are called Darwin something here (streets, bird, flowers…).
After settling in we went in town, called Puerto Ayora, to have a look around. While walking here, it is very common to see a lot of wildlife. Sea lions, Iguana, birds are part of the everyday life. Sea lions resting on a bench is a common sight! Iguanas are everywhere warming up on the ground or rocks. That is pretty cool to see. The town is lovely. The shorefront is touristic but still nice to walk around. There is a lot of painting on the walls, fountains with tortoise and sea lions sculptures. When walking on the pier, you can see sarks, turtle, ray in the water… Overall a nice place to spend some time. When you get away a bit from the touristic area, you can see how the people live here. Most of the houses seem to be still in construction. We found out later, when chatting with one of our guide, that people don’t like banks, so they don’t borrow money from them: instead they save a bit, when they have enough to do something on their house, they do it and wait to save more to keep adding. That explain why a lot of the house are looking that way!
For dinner, we found a small restaurant with simple but tasty food, for $5 each.
Wednesday morning, we did some schoolwork as it has been a while!! It is getting harder and harder to get Andrew and Emma to work. I’m not sure how well it is going to go when we are back to regular school. We’ll have to see!
Then we went to the closest beach and had a splash around. Andrew and Emma practiced snorkelling as we booked a tour for the following day.
On the beach, people are sharing the space with sea lions resting on the white sand. The water is a beautiful blue and the contrast with the black volcanic rock is amazing. The landscapes and colours are fantastic.
After our swim we went in town to do some grocery shopping and we stopped at one of the bar to taste a few local beers and play some board games (I always have a few in my bag).
Relaxing evening and bed not too late as we are starting early the next day.
Our first tour in the Galapagos. We are going to Santa Fe island. This is a smaller island east of Santa Cruz. We took a boat for around one hour to get there. Emma loved the waves! We did three different stops around the island. I’m not going to lie, the water was cold! It is not the best season for swimming, but as we are here, we’ll do it! I think the water was around 18 degrees, so a bit of a shock when you jump in! Emma had a small panic attack when she jumped in, as she didn’t like the feeling of the flippers. I did not handle it great (I was struggling to adjust to the cold and did not manage to keep my cool, pun intended), Kev did a much better job and Emma swam with him for the rest of the tours in the Galapagos. We saw a lot of animals: lots of colourful fish, some sea lions playing in the water, turtles, it was great!
The kids did the first snorkelling, but Andrew doesn’t do well in cold water, so I brought him back to the boat before the end of the first swim, a little bit later Kev brought Emma back to the boat as she was too cold to! Then they didn’t do the second swim as they didn’t want to get cold anymore, but still manage to see some fish and sea lions from the boat as the water is pretty clear. They came back in the water for the 3rd swim and saw the turtles.
It was a great first tour and we enjoyed seeing all the animals.
Friday the 19th of October, we did a bit more schoolwork and blogging, then went in town to book more tours for the rest of the 2 weeks. We found a tour agency called Evolving tour, owned by Andres. We booked all our tours with him as they are good value and he seemed well organised (more than the last one).
In the afternoon, he took us to the tortoise breeding centre located on Santa Cruz. Most of the big Island have a tortoise breeding centre, as the introduction of different animal over the last 400 years have damaged greatly the population of tortoise. For example, goats were introduced and started eating a lot of what the tortoise were eating, leaving very little for the tortoises. They managed to remove that threat in the 2000s and it now not a problem, but the damage was done. Rats, pigs and cats are still an issue. When tortoises are under 6 or 7 years old, their shell is pretty soft and this is when they are the most vulnerable. This is why people, find the eggs of tortoise and keep them safe. The tortoises grow for the first 5 to 7 years in the centre and then, when their shell is strong enough and there is less risk for them to be eaten by something, they are released in the wild. They are always release on the island and near the place the egg was found. They are marked a different colour, depending on where they were found.
We saw some tiny little not even one year old tortoises and a few very old and massive ones. The old ones are there, as they were found here and use to being hand fed when they open the centre. Those won’t be released, but all the ones born in the centre now are being release in the wild as they are moved into almost wild area when they get older and know how to find food.
I love the face of the tortoises: they are cute and funny, and it looks like they are wondering what the hell are you doing here, taking pictures and looking at them! They look wise for some reason, maybe because they move so slowly and look old. I’m not sure, but I love just watching them.
In the evening, we found our favourite restaurant. It was delicious and cheap! Andrew and Kev ordered ribs with rice. It was massive and even Andrew couldn’t finish! Emma got chicken kebab type thing and she loved it. I got some cooked banana and some veggie kebab that was delicious!!! There was also a very lovely and adorable dog, which sat next to us (hoping for food obviously, which he didn’t get). Emma called him Peyes (for Puppy Eyes).
On Saturday the 20th, we saw more adult giant tortoise. We went with Andres to the El Chato Ranch. This is a private land where they dig to have water for the tortoise and have the right condition for them to hang around. The tortoises are free to come and go. The day before we saw mainly baby and young tortoises, but this time they were big one! They can live up to 200 years old and weight up to 250kg.
Each island has different species of tortoise: they all adapted to the difference in the food where they live; for example, where the food is higher in the tree, the tortoises shells is more like a saddle back to allow the neck to stretch higher. Where the food is lower to the ground, the shell is more closed and rounder. There are other differences, but those are the easy one to see. All the species are either critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable, with a few species now extinct.
We also visited a small lave tube. As I said before, the Galapagos Island are volcanic, but they are not explosive volcanoes. The lava flow slowly, which cause the outside to cool down, but allowing the lave inside to keep flowing, which create lava tunnels.
After that, we went to visit Los Gemelos (the twin craters) located in the highland of Santa Cruz, which are sink holes formed after some massive lava tunnel collapsed over a millions years ago. It is now two big ‘craters’ full with lush vegetation and where you can spot some endemic (only seen here) birds. I really enjoyed this walk: the main colour here is green! Everywhere, some moss and lichens on the trees make the scene fairylike. This was a lovely tour.
On Sunday, we did mostly nothing! A rest day! We did took a walk in town, found another cheap but delicious lunch. And that was it for the day.
Monday we went to Isabela Island. This is the biggest island of the archipelago. Isabela Island has six volcanoes on it and 5 of them are active.
To get there, we took a ferry for a couple of hours. Then when we arrived, we jumped on a smaller boat to get to the Islote Tintoteras, where we walked around to admire the volcanic rock formation and see the marine iguanas, warming themselves on the rocks. There are a lot of them! We saw a small channel of water where a fair few sharks like to rest as the water is nice and warm there.
After that it was snorkelling time! With a bit of hesitation, as we know the water can be cold, we all jumped in the water. The water was definitely warmer than a few days ago, which was a nice surprise! We saw more colourful fish, turtles, sea stars and more.
We got a lunch in a local restaurant and then went to see another tortoise breeding centre.
We spent the evening at one of the bar/restaurant on the beach. The kids played in the sand, throwing coconuts up high in attempt to break them and built castle with the pieces of it.
Kev and I enjoyed a couple of cocktails while watching them.
The following day, we did a hike on the Sierra Negra, one of the volcanos of the Island. Sierra Negra is considered the second biggest caldera (this is the opening of the crater): it measures 10 km across from north to south and 9 km from east to west. Its last eruption dated from 2005.
The view from the top is magnificent. On the ridge of the volcano, you can see beautiful greenery and at the bottom, you can see the black volcanic rock. The colours here again are striking. You can see the different lava eruption, the darker the more recent. We keep going pass the volcano to go see the Volcan Chico (which means little), which is a fissure on the cone of Sierra Negra. You can see some previous lava eruptions coming for there as well. The west part of the Sierra Negra volcano is very lush with a lot of vegetation. The east side having had the most recent eruptions, seem like another world: black and grey rocks with very little vegetation. While walking, I was taking all the sights of this amazing landscapes. This is truly an experience. We walked for 9km to get to a point where you can see all the volcano of the island. This is an amazing view. I tried to take a picture of it, but it doesn’t look anything like you see in real.
We walk our 9km back and were very happy to see our bus to take us back to our place.
After a bit of rest, we went back to the beach area for a couple of cocktails while the kids still full of energy (I don’t know how!) played on the beach.
Wednesday the 24th was our last day on Isabela Island. We did one last snorkelling tour. After a 40 minutes boat trip, we arrive on another part of Isabela Island, called the Los Tuneles (The tunnels). This is another type of volcanic rock formation, which created lots of small ‘tunnels’ or bridges. We snorkelled near this area and saw a lot: sharks, ray, turtles, plenty of fish. We went in different type of environment: clear water and mangroves area where the water was a bit murkier.
Andrew was very lucky to see a seahorse and the guide took a picture of it as it disappeared quickly when the whole group arrived to see and move the mangrove it was holding onto.
We also went for a walked on Los Tuneles, to see blue footed boobies, birds with bright blue feet very common in the area, nesting. We were lucky and saw a chick one day old.
It was a perfect way to finish our stay on Isabela Island.
A couple of hours of ferry and we were back on Santa Cruz.
Easy evening and movie night.
Thursday was a resting day, with some blogging and a nice walk in the town. We went back to our favourite restaurant for dinner and Peyes was there too, to the kids’ delight! And mine and Kev too, this dog was so cute!
Friday we visited one more Island. We did a day trip to San Cristobal Island. This is the easternmost island of the Galapagos and also the oldest one. I wanted to go there to see the crater full of fresh water, which is the only one in the Galapagos. Unfortunately, when we arrived there, after a pretty rough 2 hours ferry ride (both the kids got sick and I almost did), our guide Andres told us the weather was not good around the crater and the visibility would not be good.
We decided to go see one the beach on the other side of the island with white fine sand, sea lions and beautiful blue water. After that, more tortoises, then lunch in town (delicious and cheap!) and then a walk in the town. It was a short tour and I was a bit disappointed not to see the crater, but well, you can’t control the weather! 2 hours of ferry back, a lot smother this time, and we were back on Santa Cruz.
We came back right on time to see the parade to celebrate the lobster festival! Dancers, floats with beauty pageants in it, people dressed up as lobsters and of course music. It was fun!
We did not stay for the beauty pageant, as I found that outdated but we had fun watching the parade.
Saturday 27th of September: I started the day with a massive migraine so I was out for a good part of it. Kids did schoolwork and then Kev took them in town, to play on the playground they like. Turn out there was a lobster and beer festival there, with stand selling cheap beer and food.
I rested a bit longer and joined them in the middle of the afternoon. We tried some beer and some lobster.
My favourite was the ceviche (a type of cold soup) with shrimp and lobster in it. It was delicious. The kids had sushi, which made them very very happy!
Sunday is our last full day here. We did some blogging and had one last walk in town.
It was a lovely break, with a fair few resting, catching up on school days but also amazing adventures, seeing animals unique to the Galapagos and breathtaking landscapes.
It was a bit of a spur of the moment decision to come here, and I don’t regret it. It was expensive though, and we are very fortunate to be able to do that.
Tomorrow, we are flying back to the mainland, back to Quito to discover the rest of Ecuador.
See you there.
MelRead more