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!

The Beautiful Cartagena de Indias

Described in the guide books as South America's most beautiful city, Cartagena didn't disappoint, and was further advantaged by being my first footfall on dry land in more than five days. Built on a series of islands it has everything from historical fortifications, to white sandy beaches and 21st century skyscrapers.

The city was established in 1533 and quickly became a major trading port for the export of South American wealth back to Spain. This also made it a target for pirates, and the English and French attacked the city on a number of occasions over the next two centuries. The Spanish response was to progressively build a set of walls around the inner city, then the adjoining poorer island and a series of forts on hill tops adjacent to the water route to the city.

Sir Francis Drake successfully sacked the city in 1586 despite the fortifications in place at that time, but the hardest fought battle for the city came in 1741 when an English fleet of close to 200 ships and more than 140,000 men attempted to take Cartagena by progressively destroying each fortification to permit the ships to enter the bay, and then disembarking and marching (as it turns out through swamps) to disable the other fortifications. Yellow fever and malaria did as much damage to the progress of the English invaders as did the defenders of the city, but they were eventually defeated.


I spent a couple of days wandering the town with Dara (my Canadian sailing buddy from the Panama crossing).


We did a museum tour of the Palacio de la Inquisicion, a very lovely building with a notorious past which shows some rather nasty looking torture instruments used during the Spanish Inquisition to extract confessions from heretics. A translator wasn't necessary as most of the exhibits were pretty self explanatory.



A few photos taken just wandering around the streets of the old city.





This is the Castello de San Philippe de Barajas, built on a hill just outside the walled city. It is walking distance from town, however Dara and I went up there as part of a tacky bus tour of the city and surrounds. (Dara and tacky bus also shown below.)




The Convento La Popa is a convent built on top of a 150m high hill about 20 minutes bus ride from the city. The view back over Cartagena was lovely, and the Convent itself (restored in the 1960s) was worth the visit too. I think it got a little lost in translation, but our guide told us they threw a goat off there to signify the overthrow of the idol worshipers. Or something like that.



Today, Cartagena is still a major port and industrial centre as well as a significant tourist destination. Well and truly worth a longer stay than the three days I was in town for.

Sailing to Cartagena

After a couple of relaxing days in the San Blas islands requiring little more from us passengers than the odd bit of washing up or cooking of pancakes (yep, that would be me again), we set sail on the two day trip to Cartagena.

At first it seemed nice that everyone was given a turn at the helm on the way out of San Blas, and the sailing was good as the seas were mild and the wind (often directly from the East) was coming from the north east allowing us to hoist plenty of sail to complement the engines.

Andreas, our captain made an offhand remark as we sailed out of San Blas that everyone would get a turn at night sailing before we reached Cartagena and I didn't really understand the implications of what he meant until I was woken for my shift at the helm at 3am. Canadian Dara and I replaced Angela and Christian (the Swiss couple) at the helm for our three hour stint steering the boat on a due east course for Cartagena. Andreas was curled up in his blanket in the rear of the boat behind me for most of this time, occasionally lifting up his head to check our course or proximity to the two cargo ships whose lights we could see on the horizon.

It turned out to be a six hour shift by the time I was relieved of steering duties, which was interrupted for an hour of stationary battering by waves while Andreas performed some patch repairs on the main sail which had torn during the night.

Although below deck, things weren't going so well either. American friends Sean and Bryan were sharing the front bed, and it turned out that both the windows above their bed leaked, dripping water on Bryan's face most of the night. Meanwhile, Alicia was bedridden with seasickness and would henceforth scarcely be seen out of her bunk for more than five minutes for the rest of the voyage. Adam had fared better in the bed he shared with me, and we had the added advantage of fresher air as we were positioned below the only hatch that could be left open.

All in all, it was a long night and Andreas was being evasive about whether we would arrive the following evening or have another night at sea. While it was a little bumpy, the weather remained relatively mild for ocean sailing, with two to three metre swells, but still reasonable winds which meant that the sails were assisting our speed as well as providing stability.

The day was uneventful apart from the appearance of a pod of dolphins who swam alongside the boat for a bit, and I turned in early, hoping to get a good sleep in before our next shift.

I'm still not sure when the weather turned bad, but Adam mentioned the first shift helm team (him, Sean and Bryan) had a couple of good hours before "it all went to sh*t". The wind and seas both picked up and the mainsail tore again, this time in two places. With the sails down for repairs for almost two hours, the boat was again buffeted by the waves and this would continue for most of the night. Conditions in the front cabin had deteriorated and Shaun and Brian's bed was soaked and the books and fruit on the shelves above them were falling on them while they tried to sleep, Dara's cabin started to leak and Angela and Christian were being knocked around badly in their tiny cabin. Meanwhile my bed started to disintegrate, and I needed to hold the cushion I was sleeping on in place with my foot while holding the bunk above me with my hand just to stay in the bed. Then the waves started crashing over the whole deck and through our open hatch, drenching half the bed, Adam's pillow and my back before I got it shut.

I gave up trying to sleep shortly after Adam came downstairs as the bed was proving difficult to hold together with one person in it, it was proving impossible to do so with two. Sean moved into the Swiss bed during their shift at the helm, leaving Bryan to endure the torrent of sea water, books and oranges coming down on their bed.

Up on deck, the weather was continuing to deteriorate and tiny 22 year old Angela was bravely attempting to hold the boat, which again had a ripped mainsail, on our due easterly course. I dozed for a while in the cockpit while Angela continued to wrestle with the helm. Unfortunately Swiss precision time making apparently doesn't extend to Swiss precision time reading and Dara and I started the last shift at 2:45 instead of our scheduled 4am.

By this stage Bryan had moved into Dara's room leaving Sean to the rain of fruit and salt water in their bed, Alicia had given Adam her bunk and just sat forlornly at the navigation desk asking everyone who walked past when it would be over, and Andreas, who had been working most of the night, had curled up, exhausted, in the cockpit. As we got closer to land, the wind and seas both lightened substantially and our passage became calm, and by the time the sun came up, we were sailing smoothly along the Columbian coastline about 12 nautical miles from Cartagena.


Having done some harbour racing I've always wanted to try the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, and I understand from people who have done one that night shifts, torn sails, leaking hatches, and lack of food and sleep are all part and parcel of those types of voyages. So I should point out that none of this experience makes me any less inclined to attempt ocean racing should the opportunity arise. However, this isn't what your average group of backpackers are expecting to be signing up for when they book a boat trip to Cartagena.