Satellite
Show on map
  • Day 268

    San Cristobal

    September 10, 2022 in Ecuador ⋅ ☁️ 21 °C

    We headed over to the airport in Villamil to catch our flight to the island of San Cristobal, the most Easternly of the inhabited island and the oldest at about 3 to 8 millions years. The Airport of Puerto Villamil is only half built,maybe even less than half, there are no toilets, shops or restaurants. There isn't even enough seats for all the passengers that could be on our flight. Luckily our flight wasn't full, only 7 of the 9 seats were taken, yes this was a very small plane. Unfortunately for us it is quite cloudy today, so once we took off we spent most of the flight above the clouds, we were hoping for a view of the islands from above but it was not to be. Safely landed on San Cristobal, our hotel, and in fact the whole town is just a 10 minute walk from the airport, quite handy really as it saves on a taxi. This will be our base for the next few days as we go bird watching out in the Eastern islands.

    San Cristobal is the capital of Galapagos and we saw a big change compared to Puerto Villamil. It has paved streets and the bars and restaurants are more lively! It's still a very small town but with nice little places of art and a lot of sealions everywhere! They're on the beach, but also boats, benches, in the middle of the square or sometimes in the middle of the road. There are a lot of young pups as well, as this is a good place to raise them, even harder to resist to touch them! But we've resisted, the only sea lion we touched was a slide sea lion 😄

    We were missing museums so we've visited the interpretation center. A bit outdated, but interesting little museum that explains the history of these islands and the daily life of their inhabitants. These islands were first used by whalers and pirates, it was a harsh stop as there isn't a lot of fresh water on the islands, so on most of the first boats a lot of people died, but then they discovered that they had a plenitude of tortoise to be catched. One of those early whaling boat caught more than 800 in just in a few days. Then they store them upside down in the boat, alive, and leave them there to be eaten later. The tortoise can live up to a year without water or food as they go to a kind of hibernation state...Good thing for the sailors, very sad for the tortoises.

    Luckily they're now protected and even if some still use them for meat, it is not in these numbers. On a positive note, Galapagos try hard to use clean energy, with some solar panel and wind turbines, although they are plagued with maintenance issues due to the harsh environment. They also try hard to limit their immigration on the islands to avoid bigger towns and more impact to the natural habitats. Its a difficult job to try and balance the destructive nature of the tourist industry with the needs of the local inhabitants, so far it seems they are doing a pretty good job.
    Read more