San Cristobal, Galapagos Islands

 

port of San Cristobal, Galapagos Islands

From Quito, we flew to the Galapagos via Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, spreading across a low, hot and humid plain.  From there, the flight went on to San Cristobal, on the Galapagos island of the same name.  As you come in to land in San Cristobal, you can see the clear turquoise water where you will spend the next few days or weeks exploring these remarkable islands that were such an influence on Charles Darwin and his study of evolution.

our boat, the Majestic

The airport is a short distance from the port where we met our 16 passenger yacht for our 2 week tour of the Galapagos.  Before boarding the boat, we walked along the quay, which is filled with sea lions sunning themselves on benches, tables, stairs, decks, sidewalks, anywhere they can flop down.  San Cristobal is awash with sea lions who seem to care little for the hordes of tourists taking their pictures and exclaiming over them.



Marine Iguana--over 3 feet long

Almost immediately after settling in (sort of) to our tiny cabin aboard the yacht Majestic, we took off in the boat’s 2 pangas (Zodiacs as we know them) for a beach on San Cristobal Island where we were sure to see iguanas and sea lions, which we did see in abundance.  Only a short distance down the path, we encountered our first Marine Iguana, a huge lizard measuring over 3 feet long from snout to tip of tail.  He waited while we meandered to the side of the trail and took endless photos of him before considering whether to proceed.

 The Marine Iguanas are one of four iguana species found in the Galapagos.  They are mostly black except during mating season, when they develop deep red coloring along their sides.  The speculation is that these iguanas originated somewhere in South America and got carried off to the Galapagos on floating logs or some such conveyance.

 

baby sea lion sleeping on beach

Ecuador took control of the islands even before then.  Christopher Columbus visited 4 of the islands on his journey to America.  Sailing ships stopped here regularly to get fresh water and fresh meat in the form of giant turtles.  So sad—they would haul dozens of the turtles aboard and put them in the hold upside down so they couldn’t escape.  The turtles could live for a year that way, so whenever the cook needed fresh meat for the crew, he would simply go below and grab one of the pitiful creatures and cook it.  The estimate is that 250,000 turtles were taken from the Islands for food.  Today, there are 25,000 left.  So they are part of a protected breeding program, which we will visit, and watched over carefully.

yellow warbler

Along the beach yesterday, we saw dozens of iguanas lolling in the sun, sea lions napping on the sand and beautiful birds flitting from low bush to low bush.  There are no native tall trees on San Cristobal Island.  Most of the vegetation is mangroves, which do well in salty water conditions.  There are also many native bushes that turn brown after the rainy season, but that provide food and cover for the birds and reptiles here.



sea lion resting on bench

pelican resting on roof

Giant turtles come ashore at night to lay their eggs about this time of year.  They bury them in the sand and then return to the sea where they will mate again and again over a 6 to 8 week period, dragging themselves up to the dunes to lay their eggs after each mating.  The gender of the turtles depends on how warm the eggs get—females develop from the warmer eggs; males from the cooler ones.  So the eggs at the top of the nest get more warmth from the sun on the sand while the males make up the bottom layers of eggs (about 80 per nest).  When they hatch, the females usually crawl out of the hole first and make a break for the water.  They get eaten first.  The males don’t make it out until dark, so tend to survive more readily than the tiny females.  Our guide told us that only 1.5% of the baby turtles actually live to old age, which could be 100 years or more.  While snorkeling today, we saw several of these huge creatures on the bottom of the ocean, nibbling algae off the rocks.  They will probably come ashore within the next few nights.

 

lava lizard