Are you ready to go to the Galapagos Islands?

The Galapagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands that straddle the equator far out in the Pacific Ocean. They are a Province of Ecuador and are some 600 miles off the Ecuador coast. People mostly speak Spanish and the islands have less than 30,000 people.

Probably the greatest fame comes from Charles Darwin during his Voyage of the Beagle which visited the Galapagos Islands. Darwin’s study of the island’s endemic species contributed to his theory of evolution by natural selection.

The Galapagos have about 3,000 square miles of land spread out over 17,000 miles of ocean. Isabela, the largest island, makes up almost three-fourths of the total land area of the islands. The Galapagos consist of 18 main islands, 3 smaller islands, and over 100 islets.

The main lure in the Galapagos is the animals. They have many animals that are found nowhere else on earth. One key is that most of the animals here have no predators and hence, no fear of humans or other animals. That means that you can walk right up to most of them.

We flew to the Galapagos and back from Quito, Ecuador with a stopover at the Taura military base for passengers and fuel. We were in the Galapagos Islands in November 2004.

Most of our time was spent hiking and watching animals. Most of the Galapagos Islands seem to be one big park.

We did manage to have some time to relax. This was our first night on board our 16 passenger boat, the Carina, with our friends Ron and Patty. Life is good.

The last photo is just to show that we did do things other than watch animals. This was a hike down into lava tubes.

Sea Lions

Here comes the Galapagos wildlife. These are sea lion photos, taken on different islands. They don’t need much explanation. We saw hundreds of sea lions. We walked right up to them and they mostly ignored us.    

This sea lion is one that didn’t ignore us. Our guide warned us to be careful around a “beachmaster”. A beachmaster is a dominant male that dominates a beach or part of a beach. I wasn’t sure how I would know when I was near a beachmaster but after seeing this guy, I knew. This guy chased us off the beach. It was easy to outrun (out-walk actually) him as they don’t move that fast on land. We did, however, encounter quite a few sea lions while snorkeling and that’s a different story.    

Most of our tour group wasn’t much for snorkeling. The only two people who snorkeled at every opportunity were Vicky and me. One day, we went snorkeling off a beach, just the two of us. We had been warned that sea lions had attacked two snorkelers the prior week, one of them requiring stitches on the wound. They probably didn’t attack so much as protect. We were told to be wary of getting between a mother and cub or near a beachmaster. But when you are snorkeling, you can’t see much or know if you are between a mother and cub. Most of the time, it was fun to be around the sea lions as they would swim by and hit our flippers. Anyway, Vicky stayed close to shore and I headed out to sea along a rock spit. I was out about 100 yards from shore when I saw something sticking out from a rock on the ocean floor, about twelve feet below. I was treading water, waiting to see what would come out. It looked like a shark. All of a sudden, I felt something big and rubbery between my legs and “Bang”, I was face to face and nose to nose with a sea lion. It scared the daylights out of me. I immediately headed in to shore. What is even more amazing was that the people on shore claimed to have heard me yell, “Oh Sh*t” – from 100 yards out to sea, through my snorkel!!

Galapagos Birds

The birds of the Galapagos were the star performers, at least above the waterline. They were very active and fun to watch. That is as opposed to many of the mammals and reptiles.   

The first photo is of the signature bird of the Galapagos Islands, the blue footed boobies. I believe that they are the only birds in the world with blue feet. It was really fun to watch them hunt for fish. They would go diving for fish in unison, maybe four to twelve birds together. It was like watching the Blue Angels flying team. Every single movement was in lock step with each other as they flew up and around, hovered and dove for fish, and then came back up. It was very fascinating and fun to watch.    

The next photos is two Nazca boobies, formerly called Masked boobies. But since there are both blue and red footed boobies, I don’t know understand why these aren’t called green footed boobies, since they have green feet.

The third photo is of a young Galapagos hawk. I got photos of mature Galapagos hawks, but I wasn’t nearly as close as this photo. Notice the blue beak which the blue and red footed boobies also have blue beaks.

The last photo is of a gull that was also very colorful and active.

Lizards

These are some lizard photos. No, no, no, not attorney photos – real lizard photos. Now that my daughter Rita finished Stanford Law School and passed the bar, I’ve quit telling lizard jokes. These are real lizards. The first two are lava lizards from the Galapagos Islands. We saw lots and lots of them. They were quite big by our local lizard standards. The first one is a male and the second a female.   

The last one is an Amazon lizard, just for contrast. The Galapagos lizards were easy to get in photos but the Amazon lizards were pretty wary. I managed to catch this one just outside our door in one of our camps. 

More Bird Photos

Here are some more bird photos. This shows part of why I enjoyed the birds and the Galapagos so much.

In the first photo, I was standing very close and watching this night heron. All of a sudden, a crab walked up the rock below the heron. I said, “Oh, look at the crab,” and the night heron did and grabbed it with his beak, second photo. 

The flamingoes were nice, but after seeing about one million of them in a lake in Africa, this wasn’t so spectacular.

But I did like watching the flamingoes feed. They walk and dig through the mud with their beaks, backwards as they walk. It leaves a trail in the mud like a jet leaves a contrail in the sky. Flamingo art.

Marine Iguanas

Here are  some marine iguana photos. We saw lots of marine iguanas. They weren’t all that active, though we did see some swimming, eating algae (their complete diet), crawling, and fighting. But most of the time, they just laid there soaking up the sun to warm their bodies. We got very close to them and when we got too close and irritated them, they spat salt at us. Apparently, spitting is how they get rid of all the salt that they take in from eating algae which grows on rocks in the ocean. Fortunately for us, they were short-range spitters and not all that accurate. I will add, however, that I didn’t get that close to the guy in the last photo.

Galapagos Pelicans

Here are some photos of pelicans. They were usually around us and almost always at least mildly entertaining. I didn’t get any real exciting photos of them but I thought I would post these. I liked to watch them feeding the best but I didn’t get any good photos of them feeding. At least these aren’t as scary as that big marine iguana.

Miscellaneous Photos

We stayed busy in the Galapagos and here are a few miscellaneous photos to prove it.

The first photo is just a good photo that I wanted to post. We spent a day or two wandering around Santa Cruz Island. It is the capital, center of commerce, most populated island, and has Puerto Ayora which is the biggest town in the Galapagos. 

The second photo is at the Charles Darwin Research Station. It actually has nothing to do with Charles Darwin, but uses his name to good advantage. It’s a tortoise research facility and they raise giant tortoises.

The third photo is on Floreana Island. It has a barrel that has acted as a no-stamps-required mailbox for sailors since 1793. We picked up a letter to mail and dropped one off to ourselves. We are still waiting for it.

The last photo is at a farm of one of the original families to inhabit the islands. They have cows, pigs, corn, and more. They asked our travel group who wanted to try milking a cow, expecting us tourists to stand back and look sheepish. Little did they know! Vicky and I showed them how it’s done.

Wild Tortoises

Not too far from where we stayed on Santa Cruz Island, we walked through some farmer’s field. They set it up so that tourists have permission, for a fee. It’s a natural tortoise migration area, for the male tortoises. They have sort of a migration route up and down the mountains. We saw maybe 20 tortoises in the hour or more that we wandered around the fields. I took some videos but these are just some still photos. Our guide said that these giants live to be about 500 years old, but thought that most of the ones in these photos were probably only about 100 years old.

Frigatebirds

Here is one of the real star performers of the Galapagos Islands. I loved the frigatebirds. They were very active, very big, and provided lots of action. Some people didn’t like them because they can’t secrete enough oil to make their wings waterproof and so they can’t dive for their own fish. They therefore harass other birds who have caught fish to cough up the fish and they usually catch the regurgitated fish in mid-air. Frigatebirds have the largest wingspan-to-weight ratio of any bird. Their wingspan can be up to 7.5 feet.

The first photo is a frigatebird feeding frenzy. I only got a small portion of the group in this photo.  In this photo, a sea lion had puked and the frigatebirds were having a field day.

This photo is a male frigatebird. The males puff up their necks during mating season to attract the females. Who could resist that?

The last two photos are of the main colony area.

In the last photo, you can also see a great blue heron. There are two kinds of frigatebirds: the Magnificent Frigatebird and the Great Frigatebird. This colony had both kinds.

Ocean Miscellaneous

Here are some odds and ends photos. The first is of a couple of Sally Lightfoot crabs. We saw thousands of them and they have already been in some previous photos. This is just a close-up photo.  

This photo is as we were leaving an island and I happened to notice a marine iguana swimming in the waves. The boat was rocking so it’s not a great photo, but we didn’t see too many iguanas swimming.

The next photo is only interesting if you hear the story behind it. Vicky and I were lying in bed (on board the Carina) one morning and kept being awakened by a loud noise. It sounded like water rushing or something rustling. After hearing it quite a few times, I decided to go and check it out. I looked over the side of the boat from our second deck cabin. I noticed lots of fish in the water around our boat. After a while, some parrotfish came in chasing the little fish, resulting in the rushing water sound. I hung around and got this photo the next time it happened. I didn’t get the water at peak disturbance but you get the idea. The small fish were using our boat for protection from the parrotfish.

The last photo was from the same location but on another day. There wasn’t much cover for fish on the islands in the Galapagos, so the fish used the boats for protection. This was a common sight when looking over the side of our boat.

Land Iguanas

Here are some land iguanas. These guys don’t go in the water. They have round tails, while the marine iguanas have flat tails. We saw lots of these guys, but mostly on South Plaza Island. They were more active than the marine iguanas that we saw here, which was surprising to me.  

The first guy was by far the old-timer of the island. He was also very big, as in probably around 13 or 14 pounds. He also blended in quite well with his surroundings.

The third guy seemed hungry because I would think you would have to be hungry to eat prickly pear cactus. Actually, that’s the land iguanas main food. No wonder they look so crusty.

The last photo might be just another land iguana, but I thought that I might have seen him in a Budweiser beer commercial. He definitely has the profile.

Royal Palms Hotel

Here are some photos that I wasn’t going to post. For the most part, this was not a luxury vacation but more of an adventure vacation. I get many comments back from my trips like, “Remind me never to use your travel agent” and “That looks nice but I think I’ll go to Paris”. So while I don’t want to disillusion anyone, we didn’t rough it the entire trip.  We got booted off our boat in the Galapagos four days early. To make up for it, they put us up in the Royal Palms Hotel, which is a five-star affair. Here are a few photos. The hotel only had about fifteen bungalows which were stand-alone units and very nice.

In this first photo, Vicky is in the Spa room.

This is from inside the spa room, looking out at our nearest neighbors (Ron and Patty). Vicky wouldn’t pose for me in this photo.

Vicky is by the front door with the big old door key.

We only had to order a fire at a certain time and they sent someone over to build and start the fire for us. We usually ordered our fire for while we were at dinner, so that it was going when we got back from dinner.

Below is me keeping my daily journal which is in the room to the left of Vicky in the first photo.

Frigatebird Feeding Time

This might be the best sequence of photos that I took on this trip. We were at the frigatebird colony (which I showed previously) and I witnessed and photographed some baby frigatebird feeding. Frigatebirds normally only have one baby – but a big baby. Baby frigatebirds don’t learn how to fly for about one year. During that first year, the young bird just stays in the nest and squawks for food. This baby is actually young and small. In this sequence, I got the baby frigatebird in its nest waiting for mom to come back with food.

Now you see mom with some fish for junior.

In the third photo, the baby frigatebird gets impatient and dives in for its dinner.

This is the same third photo but I tried to blow it up to give a better view of baby bird with its head down mom's throat.

More Royal Palms

Here are some more photos from the Royal Palm Hotel on Santa Cruz Island. The first photo is from our bedroom. The white haze in the background is the ocean, which we could see some of the time.

In this photo, Vicky consented to a photo in the morning as she was preparing for the day.

The third shot is in the dining room at dinner with some of our fellow travelers.

The last photo is just outside the dining room as we were on our way in for breakfast one morning. Even at our hotel we had wildlife. This is a short-eared owl who hung out and hunted near the dining room.

Bartolome Island

Bartolome Island is a very small island just east of San Salvador Island.  While it is a rather insignificant island in the Galapagos, it is also sort of the signature island. It contains Pinnacle Rock. This is the classic (though not at all typical) Galapagos photo. Pinnacle Rock is not a natural formation. It was formed from the U.S. military detonation and bomb testing during World War II. So when you see it in the movie “Master and Commander”, it didn’t really exist in that form back in the movie’s time. But it does make for a great photo.

The next two photos were taken near our landing site on the island. The nearest boat in the second photo was our day boat which we used to get here from Santa Cruz Island.

The last photo is just a shot of the ground or hillside. It was just old lava flows. I think we could have counted all the plant life that we saw on this island on both hands. 

Penguins

Bartolome Island was the only place that we saw the penguins. It was not easy to see them here. They were somewhat elusive and moved very fast most of the time. Also, the water was choppy and so it was hard to get a good photo of them in the few seconds that we had them in sight. These aren’t my best photos but it’s the first time that I had seen penguins in the wild and these aren’t your arctic penguins. At any rate, these are some of my penguin photos.

More Bartolome Island

The first photo is a (not very good) shot of the summit of the island. It was a hike of about 650 yards to get to the top. The summit was about 375 feet high. Most of the hike was on a wooden boardwalk which protects the island and makes it easier for people to hike it. 

I took the other three photos from the summit area. After our hike up this hill, we went snorkeling. Looking at the second photo, we snorkeled from the beach out and around Pinnacle Rock and beyond, and then back to the beach. We snorkeled with sea lions, turtles, penguins, fish, and rays. It was very nice snorkeling, except for the one sea lion that snuck up on me and oogled me, face to face. The penguins swam so fast under water that it was ridiculous. The turtles were fun to swim with – very graceful. 

More Iguanas

From various conversations with people, lots of folks liked or at least seemed very curious about the iguanas on the Galapagos Islands. I liked them myself. The iguanas certainly seemed to fit well in the Galapagos and they seemed to have a lot of character somehow.

I liked seeing the marine iguanas so far out in the water but I have to confess that it gave me pause with I was swimming out there with them.

I don’t know what to say about this guy here except that he certainly seemed comfortable lying on this rock.

There’s something about the look on this guy’s face. He looks like he knows something that I don’t know…

I probably mentioned that the iguanas were everywhere…and I mean everywhere.

End of Nice Trip

 

We enjoyed a great trip to the Galapagos Islands. The islands were far different from what I expected before going there, but that’s one of the great things about traveling. The Galapagos Islands had their surprises and I like that. Our trip there was short but very memorable.

I’ve learned to classify my trips differently from what many people expect from me. Most people want me to classify my trips on a scale from one to ten or on a five-star system. They want to know what trip or place was better to visit than some other place. I tend to classify trips according to the primary enjoyment. In the case of the Galapagos Islands, it was mostly about the wildlife, both birds and animals.

These are just some random photos from the trip. First and foremost is one of my wife, Vicky. She was a lovely travel companion.

This wildlife photo is not very spectacular, but it is very appropriate. This is a finch. Finches were one of the primary animals studied by Darwin to develop his theory of evolution and natural selection.

It’s hard to pick favorite animals out from a trip like this one. Most of my favorites would go along with a story from my interaction with the animal but I might not have a photo from that. For some reason, the giant tortoises were really something special to be around and to watch. I’m not sure exactly why but it was easy to get their photos.

I most frequently end my trips with a sunset photo but since this was such a great wildlife trip, I chose this owl photo from one night at our hotel. I hope you enjoyed this trip. I know that we had a great time in the Galapagos.