A Whole Lotta Turtle Love – Galapagos Islands, Part Dos

As Jess mentioned in her post, we were told unceremoniously that our last night on the boat? Wasn’t going to happen. We should have realized as much when (a) the engine was spewing clouds of diesel all night, (b) the engine took on salt water, (c) we discovered our cockroach and locust infestation or (c) when our sleeping cabins filled up with steam and the floors soaked through with water. Apparently the crew knew of this change in itinerary from the get go, but neglected to inform us until our last briefing. So after dinner on the boat, we took the dinghy to Isla Santa Cruz´ Puerto Ayora and were booked into a hostel, with a plan to meet up at 630am for a tour of the Darwin center and our last breakfast as a group. We all went out to Limón y Café, one of the two bars in the town. It was nice to end off the Friendship Boat trip with caipirinhas and dancing.

Frienship-ers (Ariel, Jess, Niels, Jamey, me, Jessica Dos, Sharon and Antonio) at Limón y Café:

Having stayed out more than a little too late, we were blurry-eyed when we met up with our group at the Charles Darwin Research Station, but still managed ooh and aww at the baby turtle nursery (each turtle had a small number painted on the back of its shell, meaning that a bird´s eye view lent itself to the most adorable of meanderings as the numbers puttered back and forth, foraging for food), Lonesome George, the last surviving Pinta Island tortoise and a whole lotta turtle love. Lonesome George is so named because he seems entirely uninterested and unwilling to breed, despite being sequestered away with a rotation cache of female tortoises. Our guide thought that he wasn’t able to schpoff because he was young when his family and the other Pintas died, meaning he never learnt about the birds and the bees.

About the turtle love: the picture below doesn’t quite capture what it´s like to see two gargantuan male (yup, male) turtles humping each other (think creaking shells, lots of moaning and, new to us, the knowledge that a turtle´s penis is in his tail. No really, we saw it firsthand.). Fascinating – in a train wrecky kind of way.

TURTLE LOVE!

My favorite turtle picture:

Having said goodbye to our group after breakfast, we (me, Jess, Phil, Jamey (from Montana), and Niels (from Rotterdam)) had four days left to enjoy the Galapagos. Niels and Jamey had the same idea as us: book our flight back to the mainland four days post-boat trip to try and take advantage of the snorkeling, diving and hiking on the smaller islands. We saw pictures the night before of these giant tortoise shells you can climb into and take pictures with, so we decided to rent mountain bikes and take a cab up to Santa Rosa in search of them, with a plan to bike back thereafter. While the reserve itself was not as turtle-filled as the Darwin center, I did manage to get a Potato picture and we spent a good 1/2 hour acting like total idiots with the giant tortoise shells.

Awkwardly climbing in:

Me, Jess, Potato and the giant tortoise shells:

After our turtle shell fun (marred only by the fact that a cavernous room full of senior citizens was glaring at us as we cracked up), we headed to the lava tubes/tunnels near Bellavista. Pulling up to the start of the tubes, we were met by an 80+ year old man with a cane who, while showing us the crudely drawn map of his tunnels, kept trying to feed us bananas. Random, but tasty. The tubes are close to 2.6km in their entirety, with the longest about 700 m. Since some portions of the tunnels have collapsed (one notable collapse occurred when a cow fell through the roof and down into the caverns below), you clamour down to one and then come back out, readjusting to the light and getting quickly attacked by fire ants, then scurry back down to the next one, ants in tow. The most impressive of the tunnels was the Endless Tunnel of Love, so named because of its heart-shaped hole in the ceiling, with its imposing lava walls and pools of water. Climbing through, it was hard to imagine the sheer power of the lava that created the deep tunnels. Turning off our headlights to appreciate the absolute silence of being below ground definitely a highlight of the day.

Me entering the Endless Tunnel of Love:

The next day we headed out to Bahía Tortuga, a pristine white beach about 45 minutes walk from the center of town. The beach itself has a very strong current, with only a few people venturing out into the tempestuous waves. Behind the beach and encircled by groups of mangrove trees was a calmer lagoon, where we planted ourselves for the better part of the day.

Turtle Beach:

Iguana obeying traffic signs:

Our final day in Puerto Ayora consisted of a day trip out to Bartholomé island, a small island off the coast of its larger neighbour, Isla Santiago, and named after David Bartholomew (a lieutenant in the British
navy). We were initially under the impression that we could catch boats out to some of the smaller islands without actually booking a tour, but were quickly corrected by the tourist office: other than Isabella (a 3 day trip there and back by ferry, since the ferry leaves at 2pm from Puerto Ayora and comes back at 6am daily – meaning you need 3 days to actually SEE things there), trips to the smaller, surrounding islands necessarily mean dropping $100 for a day tour. Since Bartholomé´s views were (from what I could remember) just beautiful and none of us had hiked to the top of its very young volcano, we booked a day trip leaving at 5am, mostly consisting of the 3 hour bus + boat trip out to the island, followed by the hike and some fantastic snorkeling. Alongside Bartholomé is Pinnacle Rock, a jagged volcanic formation home to a great cross section of Galapagos wildlife, including penguins, white-tipped reef tip sharks, marine turtles, teeming, twisting schools of fish, giant manta rays and sea lions. Our snorkling post volcano-hike took place around Pinnacle Rock.

Wide angle view from atop Bartholomé´s volcano:

Penguins off of Bartholomé – we got to snorkel with them too!:

The next day (June 7), we said our goodbyes to Phil (he is staying on the Galapagos till later on this month) and Niels, Jess, Jamey and I made our way to the airport. Jess and I are in Buenos Aires, having arrived here at the ungodly hour of 3h45am. I speak for both of us when I say that the Galapagos, whether on our boat or staying in Puerto Ayora, was a tremendous few weeks. We both felt decadent with our days on these pristine, nature-soaked islands and nights hanging out with new friends – while we always say that this year is less of a vacation and more of a journey, our time here has definitely felt like a vacation of the first degree.

Our picture galleries are almost done (we had 1000 pictures in all, so we´re trying to cull them down, but be prepared for LOTS of sunset, blue footed boobie and sea lion pictures. Just sayin…), and they will be in each of our public Picasa galleries. Link to the galleries are to the right on our main page.

Next up – sooner than we can believe – Cape Town.

-Jodi