11/20
New York

We left Carol's at 10 AM for a 12 PM flight out of LaGuardia. When we got to the ticket counter- the tickets were for JFK!! No problem, thanks to the experienced and unflappable Carola - in fact we had nice comfy seats on the connection flight from Miami to Quito - emergency exit. When we were boarding we saw a familiar face in first class - Dick Clark! Off on his own Galapagos expedition, no doubt. He does look pretty damn good for his age.
Both flights were otherwise uneventful. Going through migración and customs in Quito was a breeze, in fact at customs they just waved us through, which surprised me - I 've carried so many movie images of grim faced foreign officials, I expected more of a hassle.
The Hilton in Quito was really nice - not a restful night, though, owing to my little digestive backup and the thin air (altitude 9500'). Also, we had to get up at 6 AM to catch a bus at 7 to the airport. On to Galapagos!

Neither of us was exactly at our best this morning. I was exhausted and uncomfortable (still, and 2 hours sleep) and Carol had a headache from the altitude. But aspirin and a shower got us both going. We wolfed down some breakfast (45,000 sucres!! Sounds expensive, but at 4,000 to the dollar, it was quite a bargain) and went to the lobby to meet the rest of the group. They were mostly retirees from the West Coast, although one woman our age actually lives around the corner from Carol in the Village! Another woman our age was traveling with her mother.
On to the minibus and off to the airport. I should mention here that the air quality in Quito is terrible - the odor of exhaust permeates everything, owing to the lack of emission controls on any of the vehicles, including our own. I didn't have a headache when I got up that morning, but after 20 minutes of Quito traffic, my head was pounding and I felt queasy.
It had been raining torrentially all night, but the rain stopped just as we pulled out of the hotel, leaving a lovely 3/4 rainbow over one of the many mountains surrounding Quito. A crowded flight to Guayaquil, where we all had to deplane and replane to the same plane to continue to the islands.
Our first sight of the islands was the edge of San Cristobal; the waters near the shore were an exquisite turquoise color. When we landed at Baltra the first impression was of a desert. There was little growing but prickly pear cactus (opuntia), which are tall, tree-like plants topped with clusters of paddle-shaped "leaves'; the succulent cactus part. There are no spines on the 'trunks'. They're between 4 and 18' high. Much dry grass and chunks of lava everywhere. No animals in sight. There was a long slow line into the building as everyone forked over another $10 US on top of the $80 fee we had already paid to get into the park.

We crammed into a bus with dozens of other travelers and rode to the ferry barge that would take us to Santa Cruz. There we saw our first sealions dozing by the dock and playing in the water. The barge was decorated with bumper stickers from different visitors. On the Santa Cruz side, our group hopped onto a small bus with venerable suspension and began a 40K trip from the north the the south end of the island. Our guide, Veronica, an Ecuadorian woman in her late 20's, pointed out various flora as we rode - the cacti, trees, and grasses.
Our first stop was at one of the sinkholes formed when a lava dome had collapsed. It is a huge circular pit many hundreds of feet across, and edged with the volcanic rock that composes all the island, and much vegetation growing in the bottom. there was also another, smaller sinkhole on the other side of the road where we saw a Galapagos dove, not much larger than a quail and with a red-circled eye, in flight.

( I am writing this days later, as the pace has been so busy. I hope I'm remembering everything. ((Right now we are approaching Genovesa after the first leg of our sea journey., It is quite flat - cliffs - many boobies diving and frigate birds patrolling over them, hoping to steal a meal. No one seems to be here but us - fantastic!~ 6:30 AM))) (I see a couple of towers near the shore - what their purpose is I'm not sure - a sandy beach with I think some sea lions basking in the early morning sun - damn, other boats are here, we're not alone after all - and now the other passengers are coming up on the upper deck as well - the end of my few moments of solitude )

Back to Day 1 - we stopped for lunch on the way at a restaurant tucked away in the lush foliage of Santa Cruz' highlands - much bamboo and vines - a beautiful view. Delicious juices straight from the farm. The first of many 5 course meals - soup, bread, entree, dessert. A delicious barbecued chicken. The vegetation had changed from all cacti and dry grass to a jungle of vines, banana tress, and various others - passion flower, Cuban cedar - very lush and wet.
After lunch we were off to see the giant tortoises that walk through Steve Divine's (!) farm. Steve's father, an expatriate from Seattle, bought the land in the early 50's. Steve has lived his entire life on Santa Cruz - an unusual place to say the least, - as exotic as it is, and wildlife notwithstanding, not somewhere I'd want to be planted for the long haul. He is raising his children there now.

We had a muddy slog through his yard and past some rather rough-looking buildings. Sure enough, there in a large expanse of meadow were four of the tortoises, peacefully browsing. Steve's father had planted, years ago, a species of grass that grows shorter and is more palatable than the pervasive elephant grass; it attracts the wild tortoises from the highlands to Steve's farm.

The group gathered around one particularly large specimen while Veronica lectured and answered questions. I went off to have a more individual experience with another. I could hear its breathing as I hunkered down next to it. The top of its carapace was as high as my thighs. This one was tamer than the others and took no notice of me at all.

We pulled into Puerto Ayora, the larger town on Santa Cruz. It was the cliché poor Latin American town, with rundown buildings and barefoot children. 'Downtown" there were more stores and various tourist and souvenir shops.
At the Hotel Galapagos, we checked into room #1, which looked right out onto Academia Bay. For the first time we watched the blue-footed boobies fishing.

On the cliff behind me are the unfortunate signs of human presence - who would think you would travel from the spray paint-spattered walls of NYC, only to find graffiti on one of the most remote of the Galapagos islands? Humans are so compulsive in their need to confirm their existence by altering their environment, even if it serves no purpose relative to their survival.
The gulls and frigate birds hang and bob like puppets on strings, facing into the wind coming in off Darwin Bay.
Time to return to the boat. We see a good-sized sea turtle, a green, on the way.

11/24

Isabela

Last nights journey ("navigation", as Luis, our guide, terms it) was horrendous. Going from Genovesa to Fernandina, we crossed 90 miles of open ocean against the wind and currents. The yacht rocked in every direction simultaneously.

We were both sick from 20 minutes into the journey, Carol the most so. By 9:30 PM she was prostrate, this with another 10 hours of journey ahead of us! I was OK as long as I laid completely flat and still; if I lifted my head I felt queasy immediately. So I stayed supine and for the most part sleepless for the entire 14-hour trip. Once we rounded the northern tip of Isabela the seas calmed considerably, but we were too sick to care at that point after 11 hours of floating, bobbing, pitching hell.
But what a beautiful sight! Isabela is really a chain of 6 volcanoes that have merged together over the eons, and their gentle slopes, crested with mist , belied their violent origins. Dolphins leaped alongside us. Fernandina was on our right, the most volcanically active of the islands, having erupted only 2 years ago. We visited this island in the morning.
The first impression was the smell, a mixture of seaside, sulfurous lava, and the droppings of thousands of sealions and iguanas. This is the most populous island in terms of iguanas, and there were so many we had to walk carefully to avoid stepping on them.
These islands are also the only home of the flightless cormorant, whose wings have atrophied from disuse. They are very rare; only 2,000 exist.
We went snorkeling after this visit, but it wasn't as good as yesterday, owing to the murky water and simply a less promising location.
But yesterday was terrific! For the first time snorkeling, I couldn't believe the amount of life there was underwater. It took me a minute or two to get used to the sound of my own breath in my ears underwater - but then, what marvels! Parrot fish, beaked like their namesake, iridescent green and pink and nearly a yard long, nibbled at the coral while schools of yellow angelfish wafted by. Sea urchins spangled the cliff walls and sea bed. The water was so clear that it was easy to see all the way down, 40 feet or more. The sensation was like flight, suspended weightlessly above a landscape that I'd only seen before in pictures and on TV. Soon a sealion dove in near me and, hanging upside down with his rear flippers above the surface, inspected me as I invaded his element.

The starkness above ground was the polar opposite of what awaited us underwater. Once again there was an underwater jungle of dozens of fish, large and small and even a couple of penguins, looking dapper above the waves and perfectly adapted below. There were also some huge starfish, more than two feet across, lying on the bottom.

South Plazas

In the AM we toured a large frigate bird colony and were rewarded with the sight of the males blowing out their crimson throat sacs to half-football proportions, turning skyward and clicking their beaks, trying to attract a female. The frigates breed year-round, and take 11 months to raise a chick - a long time in the bird world.
The morning snorkel session couldn't have been better. Immediately upon going in I had 4 green sea turtles flapping lazily around me. I followed them for some time. Next, two young sealions played with me for several minutes, looking me right in the eyes, darting about, hanging upside down, diving to the sandy bottom where a stingray flapped along . Suddenly a 6- foot whitetip shark jetted out of the gloom below me, chased by one of the young sealions, who was nipping at its tail! I have to say that I was glad to see that he showed no interest in me at all!
In the afternoon we visited a huge sealion colony on South Plaza. Big males bellowed and barked at each other, defining their territory, while pups suckled peacefully. This had to be one of the smelliest places we've been! For all their charm, these animals don't keep house very well.
In some places, the basalt was worn to polished-marble sheen from the bellies of countless sealions dragging over them for millennia.
Here also were the land iguanas - a little larger than their marine cousins, males a combination of green, orange, and brown. One male was 'wooing' a female, seemingly tenderly licking her head, then an explosive chase ensued, joined into by another male. The three ran out of sight into the bushes.

Thanksgiving Day
Floreana

We walked to a lagoon full of dozens of pink flamingoes - a bit far away in Galapagos terms, but graceful and colorful - in a way that is rare here - most of the animals are fairly drab in color- grays, browns, and blacks - with occasional startling splashes, such as the crimson throat patches of the frigate birds, the oranges of the male land iguanas, a yellow warbler flitting by.
We walked to a bay where a dozen or so sea turtles were mating and reacclimating themselves to the beach of their birth - they have a sensory organ in their necks which allows them to recognize that particular brand of sand from the beach that they belong to.
Snorkeling around Devils Crown - a caldera that has collapsed and flooded, leaving spires of rock in a circle about 1/4 mile off shore - was not as good as yesterday, though at times it can be. Still it was a terrific experience, letting the current bear us along, as huge schools of medium and small sized fish jetted by. Inside the 'crown', Carol spotted a colorful moray eel lurking in a coral bed. Other than that, nothing as dramatic as yesterday.

We saw a young albatross on the nest, and also a pair of Galapagos hawks nesting. The mockingbirds here are larger and very feisty, fearlessly approaching right to our feet and looking us right in the eyes, scolding us for invading their territory.
Snorkeling here was fun as always, but there was nothing new to see - many small, beautifully colored fish in the clear water.

We spent our last Galapagos afternoon on a beautiful white sand beach with sealions all about. Three puppies here were especially friendly and curious, coming up to us as we sat and nuzzling our legs. Touching them was irresistible, and their stiff whiskers tickled our calves as we scratched their necks gently.

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