Down and Out in Quito and Lima

Apologies to George Orwell for the title of this blog*, but I'm annoyed! Quite annoyed!

Since returning from the Galapagos Islands, I've sent most of my time in Quito, the capital of Ecuador and Lima, the capital of Peru. Just clarifying where they are in case anyone thought Lima was somewhere in Brazil :-) Frankly, neither of these cities are much to write home about, but I'll t least give it a try. Quito has some interesting architecture and an 'Old Town' worth the visit, even if most of the buildings are now food and clothes shops. I went sightseeing in Lima for one morning and was pretty well done with the by midday. The highlight was 60,000 human remains two levels below ground under the San Francisco Cathedral. To be honest, I struggle to come up with much positive to say about the place from the perspective of a tourist.

But that's not why I'm annoyed.

Ecuador's prinipal source of revenue (more than 50% of national GDP) comes from oil deposits. The United States commenced free-trade negotiations a few years ago, but dropped the negotiations when the Ecuaorian trade reps said they wanted to impose a special levy on foreign oil companies that would maintain or increase the existing tax on oil exports. Peru's principal sources of national revenue come from mining and, to lesser extent, oil revenues. Both countries, struggle with redistribution of income to improve the living standards of their poorest residents (in South America as with most of the New World, this means the indigenous population). Particularly tragic is Peru, which has 45% indigenous population (I *think* the highest in South America), and rather than this being a postive for pre-Spanish culture, the problems with malnutrition among indigenous children are as bad as anywhere in the continent but just represent a very large portion of the total Peruvian population.

This is regrettable, but it is still not why I'm annoyed.

The significant income inequality and genuine poverty in these countries, make them relatively dangerous, this includes for tourists who can be the target of theft, scams and violence. Incidentally, Lonely Planet warns their readers that the border crossing between the two as having the worst reputation in South America. And this is the root cause of why I'm annoyed.

In Quito, I had the details of my ATM card stripped (I still have no idea how), so I needed to cancel the card and get some emergency funds transfered via Western Union. Then, rather than finding an ATM when I entered Peru to get cash, I needed to exchange money at the border, and was handed fake money by a dodgy money handler. Even more annoying is that I had taken the Lonely Planet's advice and boarded a long distance bus for the border crossing, but the bus had broken down and I (along with English and German backpackers Sam and Thomas who were on the same bus) got switched to a local bus which terminated at the border.

Now while I understand the causes of poverty, and genuinely believe that people are genuinely inclined to act in good faith unless desperate. But frankly, I do struggle to be sympathetic when made a target of fraud. I lost over $1,000 on the ATM scam (hopefully recoverable through from my bank) and only about $35 on one fake bill at the Peruvian border, but am probably more incensed by the latter as its was my friendly and helpful taxi driver who took me (along with my bus companions Sam and Thomas) to the money changer. And he refused to accept payment in Peruvian Nuevo Soles saying he could only accept US$ at the end of the ride, which suggests he knew we had been given fake money.

Having got that off my chest, I've flown this morning from Lima to Cuzco, which on first impressions is a great place. It is an interesting, clean and safe city, as well as the launch point for the Inca Trail. So after some acclimatisation, in a day or two I'll be heading off up the Inca Trail to Machu Pichu. And in the meantime I'm off to find a Guinea Pig burger!

* The blog title borrows from George Orwell's first novel Down and Out in Paris and London.

I love boobies ... and other observations on the Galapagos Islands

I don't really know where to begin attempting to describe the Galapagos islands. Not only are they very different from most other places I've been, but some of the islands themselves are quite distinct from each other. Baltra, where the airport is located, is extremely dry and red with the principal plant life being catcti, while other islands support rainfall, forests and lagoons. In turn, the local environment has generated specially adapted species to meet local conditions. The adaptations that led Charles Darwin to develop his theories on evolution are on display in every corner of the islands.

The behaviour of the islands fauna despite human presence is also so special. Being largely a marine environment, the boobies nest their young in any open place they find. All of the significantly sized indigeous land animals seem to be vegetarian (iguanas and tortoises) so the boobies have no predators. It also highlights what easy prey boobie chicks are for introduced species such as rats, cats and foxes. The only creatures that displayed any sort of reticence to human presence were the small ghost crabs, which ran for their burrows at the slightest hint of movement.

In addition to the photos taken of the islands birds and reptiles, I also did some snorkelling and saw manta rays, and quite an array of tropical fish. I also had the privilege of swiming with sea lions.

The work done by the Charles Darwin Foundation in conjunction with the Galapagos Islands National Park (97% of the islands are national park, plus there is a 20 nautical mile marine park around the islands) to restore the islands is ongoing. Their biggest project (and biggest success) was the eradication of feral goats and pigs from Isabela, the largest island in the archipelago. This project took more than 10 years, and the local plants and animals sprung back to prominence almost as soon as the goats were cleared. They also have had great success with the various tortoise populations through captive breeding. One species population has grown from thirteen turtles (11 female and one male taken from the wild, plus 'Diego', a male tortoise who was previously residing at the San Diego Zoo in California) to more than 1,200 tortoises now living in the wild.

So should everyone come and see the Galapagos Islands? It is a tricky question. There were 145,000 visitors last year (versus a stated target of 120,000) and cruise ship numbers and island visits are capped. I don't know where the line can be drawn between trying to undo past human interference and continuing to allow visitors to the islands with their cameras, and clumsy feet and risk of introduction of further invasive new species. The Galapagos is an expensive place to come, the tourist boat operators pay for island visitation rights, and every tourist is required to pay a US$100 park entry fee on arrival, most of which goes to the maintenance of the national park. So despite being a vacation spot for the rich, at least the tourists are contributing (if only financially) to the solution.


I've cut the 400 or so photos I took in the Galapagos down to the 30-odd shown below. If you click on any photo, you get the full resolution image, in case anyone considers my humble photography worthy of using as a screensaver, forwarding or printing.


A pair of mating green turtles. This is breeding season and the females are making nightly pilgrimages up the sand dunes of Galapagos beaches to bury their eggs. Each female will make around two or three visits to the beach to lay, with the eggs hathing four months later.


A flamingo feeding in a lagon on Baltra. After a drought in the mid 1980's the population of flamingos declined significantly, and there are now about 300 in the Galapagos.


A marine iguana out for a walk on the beach.


Thousands of crabs swarm all over the rocks surrpounding the islands. Like most of the other creatures, these are only found in the Galapagos arhipelago.


A blue footed boobie, resting on a rock ledge.


Masked Boobies nest on the ground (as do blue footed boobies). As there are no natural predators, there nests are built wherever there is open space.


A masked boobie caring for its egg. Both parents look after the egg, with one minding the hatchling while the other goes out to feed.


A masked boobie with a newborn hatchling, probably no more than 24 hours old. Despite its fragile new offspring, it showed no concern at (or even interest in) people walking barely a metre away.


For the first month, one parent will stay with the hatchling at all times however, as they grow, both parents will go out to fish and the chicks wait patiently (and hungrily) for their return.


A red footed boobie chick being sheltered by a parent.


Another red footed boobie and chick.


Fur seals were about the only animals to acknowledge human presence. This one was he was asleep on the path in front of us and expressed his annoyance verbally at having to move before diving into the water.


A nesting spot on Isla Genovesa. If you click on the image, you get a larger version. An almost impossibly beautiful location.


A male frigate bird strutting his stuff. The red protrusion from his neck (which inflates like a baloon) is there to impress the lady frigate birds.


A frigate bird takes flight.


Red footed boobie. Just visible in the photo between the green leaves are the bright red feet.


A baby sea lion feeding from its mother. Like most Galapagos creatures, both were indifferent to my presence even though I was only two metres away.


A pair of boobies. I believe the instruction from the one on the left is not to fly too close.


Sunrise at Isla Bartolome.


A pair of Galapagos penguins, which are endemic to the islands and are also the only penguins found north of the Equator. They live in the lava tubes formed when lava reaches the sea.

Lava flows on Isla Santiago. There are 36 square kilometres in this lava flow. The hot spot that forms these vocanic islands remains stationary while the Cocos Plate (one of the earth's ocean plates) is moving west. The only current active volcanoes in the Galapagos are on Isabela and Fernandina, the two westernmost islands.


Detail of cracked lava showing the mineral composition, visible as a rainbow of colours. It is these minerals that give some of the beaches distinctive red or black hues.


View of Isla Bartholome featuring 'The Pinacle' rock formation on the right with Isla Santiago in the background. The boat visible at far right is Spondylus, which I stayed aboard during my Galapagos visit.


A colapsed volcano caldera. Only the ring and centre remain, with the rest washed and blown away. If the images above and below look familiar, Bartolome was one of the settings for the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.


Female green sea turtle having a rest. The beach is currently littered with sea turtle nests as the females climb up at night and deposit 100-120 eggs before burying them and returning to the sea.


White tip reef shark. There were about half a dozen milling around the beach when I took this photo.


The beach on Bartholome.


A resident lava lizard, curious as to why an Australian with a camera seems so interested in him.


Another sea turtle coming in for a rest on the beach. Out of shot, a couple of male sea turtles are waiting for her to return to the water.


A pair of sea lions arriving on the beach. The red colour of the sand comes from volcanic minerals from when the island was formed.


Frigate bird in flight.


Squardon of frigate birds. These were easy to photograph as they were gliding along in the updraft reated by the boat for about five hours.


The large tortoise in the centre of the screen is known as Lonesome George, who lives at the Charles Darwin Foundation research facility on Santa Cruz. Unfortunately for George, when he was rescued several decades ago on Pinta, he was the only tortoise they could find and therefore appears to be the last of his species. The other two tortoises are females from Marchena, the nearest island to Pinta and the closest genetically to George. The researchers hoped might be able to successfully mate with George but have had no success to date.


A land iguana. These were previously the subject of a breeding initiative by the Charles Darwin foundation, however it has been so successful that the animals now breed happily in the wild.

Another resident tortoise at the Charles Darwin Foundation. The shape of the shell around the neck of the tortoise indicates how far up it has to stretch to reach its food supply. Most of the resident adult tortoises used to be pets for Galapagos Islands residents, so cannot be released back into the wild. As they live to be 150 to 200 years old, no one is exactly sure of they're actual ages (and the tortoises themselves aren't telling).


My favourite native of the Galapagos Islands, would have to be the marine iguana, a creature not only incredibly well adapted to the local environment, but also incredibly improbable in its own right.

Like all reptiles, marine iguanas are cold blooded and start the day with a dose of sun on the black volcanic rocks which they live to get their metabolism moving. They then plunge into the water in search of the algae that they feed off. On the rocks close to shore, where the whole population has access, the algae has been reduced to a thin green layer, which the females and juveniles lick to get nutrients. The fully grown males swim out into the ocean to go in search of the fully grown algae (seaweed) which is where the challenges really start.

The marine iguana can hold its breath for up to an hour and swim down to quite respectable depths, however seldom stays under water for more than 15 minutes, as the cold ocean water causes their body temperature to start reducing. If they don't (or can't) keep their temperature up, they suffer hypothermia and pass into a sort of coma, then drift on the ocean alive, but unable to move until they either wash up on land or die.

The marine iguana has developed an organ behind their eyes (similar to penguins) which extracts the salt from seawater so they can metabolise the water. This works more efficiently in these creatures than any other on the planet, and allows them to metabolise water twice as salty as that which they actually drink in the ocean.

The photo to the right has a swimming marine iguana centre of picture, oblivious to the snorkelling tourists and boats around him.

Marine iguanas are only found in the Galapagos Islands, and are also the only ocean dwelling reptile on the planet. They live on fresh lava flows, that otherwise support almost no life, and thrive to such an extent that there are hundreds of thousands living in the Galapagos.

And they're handsome too!

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

In 1864 Jules Verne said the centre of the Earth contained dinosaurs. JRR Tolkein claimed Middle Earth was full of hobbits. Mariners of centuries past derided the equatorial regions with their lack of prevailing winds as the doldrums. Science claims that the centre of the earth contains a solid ball of spinning iron, which creates the planet. But they are all wrong... except maybe the scientists.

And how do I know this? Today I went to the middle of the earth (Mitad del Mundos) and discovered that it actually contains a theme park with blaring music, tacky gift shops and overpriced exhibits. Obviously Ecuador lies across the Equator, and they set up a park on 0°, 0', 0" featuring a planetarium, exhibits on French and Spanish research trips to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, and a big monument with a line down the middle, so people can stand with one foot in each hemisphere and take silly photos.

The only problem is that the actual Equator is not under that line. It is about 250m up the road in a much less visited location, the Museo De Sitio Intinan at the end of a dirt road. There you can balance an egg on the head of a nail (I did and received a certificate for my efforts), look at the Coriolis effect in action (where water drains from a sink clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and anti-clockwise in the Northern), and view a shrunken human head, plus receive instructions in Engish on how to shrink your own human heads at home. No, really.

One reader of this blog who shall remain nameless (Adam Philippe), noted a lack of photos with me in them in previous blog postings, and suggested that I might actually be sitting at home looking up web photos and writing interesting stories. Well, I'd like to report that I am not hiding in my own house and Adam, this photo is especially for you. It might not be the Equator, but it definitely isn't Woolloomooloo!

And here's me with my balancing egg.

¡FARC, I'm really in Colombia!

As soon as I walked out of the airport in Bogota, differences between here and Cartagena started to become obvious. Firstly, it was cold, and it is the first time on this trip I have needed to pull my warm jacket out of my pack. At 2,500m above sea level (a little under 8,500 feet for the metrically challenged) and wedged between two mountains, Bogota has a year round temperature of about 14 degrees (58F), and it was cooler than that when I flew in.

Another difference, and not only to Cartagena, is that Bogota is easily the most modern city I have been in during my Latin American travels. The old city with layers of 70s, 80s anbd modern buildings in the centre surrounded by genuine industry (including biochemical and technology campuses in the business parks lining the freeway to the airport) which reminds me of a German or Austrian city rather than being at all Spanish like Cartagena or indeed most of Central America.

Most backpacker hostels are in the old city, known as La Candelaria, and there some of the less savory differences emerged. Many of the buildings are not well signposted (for example the Platypus hostel simply features an Australian monotreme on the exterior wall) making navigation difficult. Signs on the inside of doors in a couple of the hostels I went into reminded backpackers to shut the door firmly behind them and never to open the door to strangers. Even in the day time, most doors (and not only the Hostels) seem to remain shut and quite a number of retail businesses featured private security guards at their entrances.

Arriving in the early evening I didn't venture more than a block or two from the hostel just walking far enough to find some water and a quick bite to eat. There really didn't seem to be anything to worry about as there were a lot of people around, however streets in La Candelaria are narrow and dark so it seemed better to not take any chances.

In the morning, Bogota seemed a much less intimidating city. I wandered around for a few hours and walked into a major ceremony in the Plaza de Bolivar, where I took the above photo. I'm not sure who the dignatories attending were (I was hoping to see Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe but no such luck) however the security cordon around the Plaza extended for a number of blocks in each direction. I don't know whether FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) or any of the other communist guerillas or right wing extremists target Bogota, but it was an impressive police presence around the square as well as the formations in the photo.


The Parque de la Indepencia was a highlight of my morning stroll, especially as there were relatively few people around so it was something of an oasis of tranquility in the city centre.


I only had a little over 24 hours in Bogota, which is certainly not sufficient to do the city justice. I also never ventured into the poorer areas of the city or took a single rumba class, so I can't really claim to have experienced everything it has to offer. However, I never felt genuinely threatened or unsafe and it certainly seemed to have plenty to offer tourists, so I'd be prepared to recommend a few days in Bogota... just so long as it didn't eat into your time in Cartagena and the beaches.


On an unrelated note, I've been searching for a Spanish language paperback copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (or Cien Año de Soledad which is its original Spanish title) through bookshops in about five countries. Garcia Marquez is the only Colombian to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature and some shops have entire shelves devoted to his work. However I've only been able to find a large print collectors edition hard copy which isn't ideal for baclpacker travel. Well finally, in the El Dorado Bookshop in Bogota's El Dorado airport I found my El Dorado and purchased a paperback copy.

I think my Spanish-English dictionary is going to get quite a workout if I'm going to attempt to read it!