From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

Identity

Their real name is the Enchanted Isles – the name “Galapagos” was given to the islands after their discovery and refers to the giant turtles called “Galapagos” that live there. 

History

After being discovered in 1535, the islands were inhabited for 300 hundred years by pirates and fishermen who found shelter, food and water there. They even ate those turtles. Charles Darwin is the islands’ most well known visitor, and he spent 5 weeks there in 1835. The observations he made then would later support his theory of evolution, published many years afterwards.

The first permanent resident arrived in 1535, but for the next century few people actually lived on the island chain. In 1959, the whole archipelago was declared a national park, and tourism began to pick up through the 1960s. Since then the numbers of inhabitants and tourists has risen steadily, and today more than 30,000 people calls the islands their home, although they are now carefully protected and it is no longer possible to take up residence. 

Geography, evolution and conservation

The archipelago is made up of 12 main islands and 12 smaller ones. They lie just south of the equator and more than 1000 km west of Ecuador. They are all volcanic islands: they were formed by the eruption of underwater volcanoes caused by the pressure of the tectonic plates, which means that they were never part of the main continent. Because of that, they were absolutely devoid of life at the beginning. Little by little, different species came to live on the islands, coming by air (from birds), and floating along the ocean currents. The first organisms to colonize the islands were lichens which don’t need much to survive and which attached themselves to the volcanic rock. Next, sea birds came to live on the islands. All of the organisms which followed came mostly from South America, and a few came from Central America. Those that did, however, adapted little by little to their new environment. Only one species of finch came originally from Central America, for example, but now there are five different finch species on different islands, each adapted to their particular environment. 

Comparatively recently, humans have introduced new species to the islands from all over the world. These new species are dangerous for the survival of the native flora and fauna of the Galapagos. Once domesticated goats run wild and eat the food of the endemic species (endemic means native to only one particular area), wild dogs chase the land iguanas, red ants chew through the vegetation, and wasps sting the birds. 

To try to protect this fragile ecosystem, strict rules have been put in place for the Galapagos islands by the National Parks. Everything that is imported has to go through quarantine. The inflow of people is also strictly regulated: everyone who arrives on the islands has to pay US$10 to register their passport with the INGALA (“Instituto National Galapagos”). The institute keeps track of the precise location of every visitor. The luggage is also carefully inspected by SICGAL (“Sistema de Inspeccion y Cuarentena para Galapagos”) both coming in and leaving the archipelago. It is absolutely forbidden to take anything off the islands, no rocks, no shells, no feathers. When we arrived, our bags were disinfected and we had to pass through a foot wash and clean our hands with disinfectant. 

Tourists are only allowed into a few sites and must absolutely be accompanied by an official park guide. The sites are generally made up of one looped path that you must stay on. Naturally, it is forbidden to feed the animals, or get too close to them. You can’t eat in any of the sites, and certainly can’t throw anything out. The guides are there to make sure the rules are properly followed. 

It isn’t easy to become a national park guide. This year, only 120 were accepted, out of 1000 applicants. Those who don’t pass the exam don’t get a second chance. And every year, all the guides have to take a special test which checks their knowledge and skill level, and if they don’t pass their license is revoked. All this administration is expensive, which helps explain the $100 fee for park entry.

All these careful controls have served their purpose: the original environment of the islands has been preserved, and the native species are able live and develop peacefully. The animals and birds are hardly bothered by humans and aren’t afraid of people, and people can get pretty close to them. If we want our children to be able to see these animals in their natural habitats, this is the price that must be paid: a certain lack of freedom which, we have to admit, took us some time to understand and accept. Like we said, access to these sites is very carefully monitored. The park authorities ensure that the quotas of visitors is respected by directly controlling the itinerary of the boats!

Our honeymoon

Our trip was everything we had imagined a honeymoon could be! After having gone through all the customs and inspections, we were taken by the park guides to the “Fragata,” the yacht that would be our home as we travelled around the islands. On board, there were 8 crew members to attend to us (the captain, the second in command, a waiter, a cook, a cook’s helper, a mechanic, a guide, and someone in charge of the cabins) and the 14 other tourists. The boat sailed during the night between the islands and took us to two sites each day. We also had daily snorkelling opportunities to see what was going on underwater. We had an absolutely wonderful time! We had been a little apprehensive that we would be seasick, but we had no trouble. The organization, atmosphere, and service were all fantastic, and we were entirely absorbed the whole time with the wildlife and scenery of the Enchanted Isles.

Isla Santa Cruz

On the first day we visited Darwin’s research centre on Santa Cruz island where we learned about the famous giant tortoises, their young, as well as land iguanas. The centre collects turtle eggs from their nests and puts them in an incubator so that they will have a better chance of survival. In the wild, only about 5% of the eggs that hatch actually make it to adulthood, which isn’t enough to sustain the species. The centre looks after the turtles until the age of 5, when their shell has hardened and they don’t have any predators, and then they release them back into their natural habitat. We also saw George the loner, the last survivor of his species. They keep him in an enclosure with two females of a closely related species, but apparently it’s not working out between them. When he dies, his species of turtle will die with him.

We spent the next morning on Santa Cruz, walking between the Gemelos, twin volcanic craters whose basins are still sinking. The guide told us about the vegetation and native birds species that lived up there, 700 m above sea level. Later we walked through a lava tunnel, a spectacular manifestation of the plate tectonics that caused the island formation. 

Isla Santa Fé

It was here that we had our first Galapagos snorkelling experience. We slipped out of the small dinghies into the cool waters. We saw sea turtles, tropical fish, and playful sea-lions. One of them actually climbed up on a rock just in front of us and posed for the cameras!

Then we landed on a white sand beach right in the middle of a whole colony of sea-lions. It wasn’t exactly easy to pick our way through them! The mother sea-lions nurse their young until the birth of another cub and cubs generally stay with their mothers until they are three years old. The males keep watch over the colony. We walked around and saw some land iguanas, lots of lizards, and a strange kind of cactus that grows more than 10 m high and can live for more than 300 years. We also saw lots of different kinds of sea birds.

Isla Espanola

We went on a wonderful hike near Puenta Suarez: every 10 yards there was something new to discover! First we saw sea iguanas. Normally they are black but during mating season (happily when we were there) they turn red. They are cold-blooded creatures and so spend the mornings sunning themselves on the dark lava rocks or on the sand. If they get too hot, they lift up their legs to let air under their bodies. Once they get their body temperatures up to about 45°C (113° F) – usually around noon – they head towards to the water to find food. They dive up to 10 m deep to eat algae, and after a couple of hours, they climb out of the ocean and spit out all the salt water that they had swallowed.

After that, we walked through the nests of albatross (with wingspans of up to 2 m), masked boobies, and blue-footed boobies. None of the birds stirred a feather as we walked by. They seemed totally trusting and some had even built their nests only a foot away from the path where dozens of tourists pass by each day. There were mockingbirds that kept us company as we walked, sometimes blocking the path. We also saw seagulls and finches. We walked up to the edge of a cliff where the young albatross take their first flight. A little further on, we saw the Galapagos geyser: a small crevice in the rocks that has a little hole above it, so that when the waves come in, the pressure forces the water through the hole and up 50 feet in the air, just like a geyser.

In the afternoon, after about an hour on the boat, we arrived at Gardner Bay beach, a beautiful white sand beach with a colony of sea-lions. Before landing, we went snorkelling around a little rocky island. Even though the water was cloudy and a bit stirred up, we saw a stingray, two reef sharks, and lot of colourful surgeonfish.

Isla Floreana

We landed at Punta Cormorant, on a brown sandy beach, although the beach was green in some parts because of the high concentration of olivine, a green mineral. Just a little ways beyond the beach there was a pond with bright pink flamingos. The guide told us that they got their flamboyant colour from all the shrimp that they eat, and that they can only live in that specific type of pond, somewhere between salt and fresh water. As we walked through the underbrush, we saw a few finches, and as we climbed a little higher, we noticed containers full of anti-wasp liquid. Apparently they protect both the tourists and the birds from being stung. Sugar Mountain loomed and taunted us from the right, so named because its slopes are so sandy that it is too unstable to climb.

Just a little further we came across a magnificent white sandy beach. From the shore we were supposed to be able to see stingrays in the water, as well as turtle nests further up the beach. We saw neither, but we did see lots of frigate birds circling around waiting to make meal out of newly-hatched baby turtles. We stayed a little while watching the crabs crawl across the rocks.

Later we went snorkelling around the Devil’s Crown, a half-submerged peak of an old volcano. The strong ocean currents carried us quickly from one side of the cone to the other, where the boat picked us up and took us back to where we had gotten in so that we could float around the other side. The water was crystal clear and both the fish and the reefs were brightly coloured.

In the afternoon we landed at Post Office Bay, which takes its name from the barrel that once served as a mailbox for the fishermen. Today, tourists can “mail” postcards by putting them in barrels, no stamps required. Every visitor that goes by looks through the postcards to see if any are near their home, and if there are, they are supposed to take them and deliver them once they get back. Afterwards, more snorkelling from the beach, where we saw a gigantic turtle in the middle of eating and watched sea-lions play.

Isla Seymour

We got up before 6 to watch the sunrise and admire the frigate birds and their huge red throat-pouches. We saw blue-footed boobies, swallow-tailed gulls and sea-lions. The blue-footed boobies are funny to watch – they seem to dance around on land, lifting one foot after the other. Later in the day, at Playas Bachas on Santa Cruz Island, we witnessed the harsh laws of nature in action. It’s hatching season for the turtle babies, and the frigate birds wait en masse. The turtle nests are high up on the beach, 30 feet from the water and buried in the sand. When the baby turtles hatch, their instinct is to wiggle out from under the sand and head towards the ocean. It’s a suicide mission, and we saw one turtle try to make it. It emerged out of sand, about the size of our palm, and took a few steps towards the water. Our guide stepped over towards it to protect it, and while he explained its probable fate, the frigate birds circled overhead. As soon as he was done he walked away from the baby turtle and it didn’t take long for one of the birds to swoop in and catch it. Of all the eggs laid on the beach, only 5% will make it adulthood. Even those that make past the first treacherous beach run aren’t safe in the water. Only after a couple of years, once they have grown in size and their shells have hardened, are they safe from predators.

Isla Genovesa

We crossed back over the equator during the night and returned to the Northern Hemisphere to see Genovesa Island. In the morning we climbed over the cliffs called Prince Philips’s steps. We saw lots of sea birds’ nests, including frigate birds, gulls, mockingbirds and masked boobies.

In the afternoon we landed in Darwin’s Bay and walked through more bird nests. We snorkelled from the beach and saw five silvertip reef sharks napping under a rock and two stingrays. Back on the boat, two sea turtles occupied our attention for the rest of the afternoon.

Isla Bartolomé

We circled around the island in the small boats to reach Pinnacle Rock where the Galapagos Penguins live. Not more than a foot high, they are the smallest penguins in the world. For a spectacular view of the island and surrounding ocean, we climbed up to its highest point, a peak 114 m above sea level in the middle of a desert of lava. It was almost as if we were back in Iceland.

After returning to the boat, we donned masks, fins and snorkels in order to check out those penguins under water! We also saw starfish in all sorts of colors, a shark, a sea-lion and lots of colorful fish. In the afternoon we went back to Santa Cruz to see Black Turtle Cove. It was a sort of lagoon, open to the ocean but surrounded by mangroves. We saw sea turtles, pelicans, and a school of large stingrays swimming up to the surface. We headed back to the boat and spent a quiet night sailing through the Plaza islands.

Islas Plazas

Again up before 6 to see the sunrise and the land iguanas of the Southern Plaza island and the hybrid iguanas. They only exist here on this island, where the sea and land iguanas have the same mating season. Sometimes they interbreed which results in a hybrid land-sea iguana. We saw sea-lions, swallow-tailed gulls, frigate birds and tropicbirds.

The boat dropped us off at Puerto Ayora, where we got on a bus headed back to the airport, still accompanied by a guide.

We really had a wonderful time here, and would recommend the Galapagos Islands to everyone!

This trip was outside the scope of the Association Planète Durable et Solidaire, but we are using the website to share our adventures with you all.

Sébastien