We had an early breakfast and then off to the airport. We had to buy a visitor pass to board the airplane. Ecuador is controlling access to Galápagos Islands so as control the human population, the greatest threat to the environment there. We flew to Baltra Island via Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city on the Pacific coast. It is located on the delta of the Guayas River. The area has been severely flooded and much of the land was still under water. A real disaster. We saw large rafts of vegetation, torn loose by the flood, heading out to sea on the Guayas River. This process has gone on for millions of years and has had a role in the story of life on the Galápagos Islands (more about that later).
Finally after more than an hour over the open Pacific after taking off from Guayaquil, 27 km2 Baltra Island came into view. This island was occupied by the US Navy during WWII. It was a base for patrols and defense of the western approach to the Panama Canal. Lava flows and cactus was our first impression of the island where the main former USN airstrip is located. It was hot! We paid our $100 Galápagos National Park entrance fee and searched out our bags. Our Ecuadorian guide with the surprising name of Washington found us and the other 14 passengers who were about to depart on the 23 m motor yacht Guantanamera. We took a bus on the 10 minute ride to the Baltra harbour. We were greated by three Galápagos sea lions that had taken over the shaded benches along the wharf. These animals have no fear of people as is characteristic of most of the birds, land reptiles and marine mammals. Had it not been for recent human enlightenment in conserving wildlife, most of the Galápagos’ wildlife would have gone the way of the similarly unafraid dodo on Mauritius. The first half of us piled into a zodiac and motored out to Guantanamera, our home for the next eight days. Our cabin consisted of bunks, a dresser and a bathroom with marine toilet, sink and shower: very functional. Al took the bottom bunk. I think climbing and descending the ladder helped to contribute to a pound/day weight loss over the course of the trip.
 Tree cactus Photo by Lionel Jackson |
 Photo by Lionel Jackson |
Washington gave us a quick orientation and we had lunch in the saloon. Then we were off across the channel between flat Baltra Island and more mountainous and much larger Santa Cruz Island (980 km2) which rises to 800 m and is composed of many dormant or extinct volcanoes. We made our first wet landing (wading in from the Zodiac) at Bacas Beach. Here we saw some of the plants and animal that live nowhere else in the world but the Galápagos such as giant prickly pear cactus trees and marine iguanas.
Specks in the flood-swollen Guayas River above are vegetation mats being carried through
Guayaquil, Ecuador on their way to the Pacific Ocean, 16 March, 2008
Photo by Lionel Jackson
But why only here? Galápagos is a natural laboratory for evolution. The islands are the tops of volcanoes and thick accumulations of lava erupted beneath the ocean on the Nasca Plate. The Nasca Plate underlies the Pacific Ocean west of north-western South America. The plate is constantly being erupted from the East Pacific Rise and slowly disappears beneath South America 1000 km to the east a few metres at a time in megathrust earthquakes. The islands emerge from the sea above a mantle hotspot and drift eastward a few centimetres/year (much like the Hawaiian Islands but they move north-westward). Eventually the islands disappear beneath the sea as they are eroded and become submarine seamounts. The islands range in age from less than in the case of Fernandina which is actively growing to about 4 million years in the case of San Cristobol, the easternmost island Plants and animals have arrived in Galápagos through lucky and rare accidents over millions of years mostly from adjacent South America. Reptiles and birds dominate because reptiles conserve water and are more likely to survive crossings on rafts of vegetation that are flushed out to sea (like we saw some heading out to sea on the flood-swollen Guayas River as we passed over Guayaquil on our way to the Galapagpos). Birds of course can fly but some non-seabirds such as mockingbirds and finches must have been blown there by storms from South America. Isolated on the islands, natural selection has worked on genetic variations and mutations to give rise to new species like the marine iguana, the only marine lizard on earth, a flightless commorant and a finch that drinks the blood of sea birds or the tool using woodpecker finch.
Next page