Cruise Day Seven: Isla Santa Cruz

Friday 8th November 2013

Las Bachas

Sunrise

View from the panga

White beach

White beach

Ismael

Treasure of Galapagos

Flamingo

Creeping plants

Darwin finch

Flying flamingos

Treasure of Galapagos

Yellow warbler

Darwin finch

Remains of American military base

Marine iguana

Flamingos

Leena

Great blue heron

Blue-footed boobie

Blue-footed boobie

Today was the last day of the cruise. We had the earliest start of the week with a wet landing at 6am on Las Bachas, a beach on the north west coast of Isla Santa Cruz. It’s one of the sea turtles’ favourite nesting beaches and, I have to say, the turtles have excellent taste. The beach had velvety soft white sand like I’ve never felt before. It felt amazing under my feet. We walked along the beach from one lagoon to the next in search of flamingos, the first had none, the second had one. As we were walking to the third, we saw two flamingos flying from the lagoon we were heading to, towards the two we had just left! Still how often does one see flamingos flying? At the third lagoon there were four flamingos. We took our photos and headed back for our last breakfast on the boat.

Both Ismael and I were ready to leave the boat today. It was a great experience, but I was looking forward to having our time back to ourselves. No more itinerary, no more regimental meal times and, while it was fascinating, at this point I felt I had seen enough wild life for a while. The week of wondering through lava fields had not helped my swankle. Sad as it may sound, I was looking forward to having wifi, sat by the pier, sipping on some cheap and strong caipirinhas (unlike those on the boat). I was also looking forward to a good night of sleep back on terra firma.

Puerto Ayora

We had not booked our hotel for the next few nights and just turned up to one Ismael had found with relatively cheap private rooms, hoping for the best. It seemed to work out fine. We paid, went to the room, dumped our bags and I had a shower. I had noticed there were more tiny bugs wondering around the room than I was happy with, but when I mentioned it to Ismael he told me about some place he stayed in Mozambique with a rat running around the thatched roof and said he was not bothered with such small creatures (Ismael has asked me to add that he was bothered by the rat, in anycase that’s a story for another day).

After spending the afternoon out as planned we headed back to the room at which point for some reason I decided to inspect the bed. The bugs were everywhere, on the covers, under the covers, on the walls, on the furniture. At this point I freaked. The room is cheap but come on, surely when they say you get what you pay for, this is not what they mean?!

I went down to reception and tried to explain with hand gestures that there were small bugs crawling all over the room. What is Spanish for bugs and crawling? Michele Thomas hadn’t explained how to say those words. The lady came up to the room to look. On inspection, she said “oh, something didas”, squashed a couple with her fingers and said “I’ll see if we can change the sheets or if we have another room available” at which point I said with a look of dread on my face “another room please”.

I had already decided that I was not staying in that room. If there wasn’t another we would get our money back and go to the place we stayed before the cruise. Sharing a room with other people was preferable to sleeping in that bug-infested hole. Ismael said she must have read the Trip Advisor review written on my face, because when she returned she said she had upgraded us to a suite free of charge and apologised saying she felt really bad.

We took our stuff to the new room which was indeed much nicer. I inspected for bugs, the bed, the walls, the bathroom, the furniture – all clear. I noticed there were bugs crawling all over our things. I killed a few, there were too many. I went down to ask for bug spray for our bags, praying they had not settled inside them. We sprayed our things until we ran out of the stuff and afterwards sat down for 20 minutes trying to recover from the whole experience. Why were we travelling again? Was this normal? What if we had slept there and not noticed, they would have crawled right up into our nose, mouth, ears and… Ismael was laying down on the bed the whole time I was in the shower. Would we return to London with dreadlocks and headlice? What was the point of this trip anyway? What would it be like for me in the jungle?!

We decided to head back out to get some air. We went to the supermarket picked up some things and got an early night.

Cruise Day Two: Isla Santa Cruz

Sunday 3rd November 2013

Ballena Bay (Whale Bay)

Marine iguanas

Great blue heron

Nazca boobies

Great blue heron

Great blue heron

Great blue heron

Blue footed boobie

Brown pelican

Blue footed boobies

Sea lions

After a hearty breakfast at we jumped in the pangas to see what we could find on the coastline around the bay. On the way we saw a sting ray (no pic unfortunately). After seeing shop after shop with t-shirts exclaiming ‘I love boobies!’ above a pair of blue webbed feet we finally caught a glimpse of a few blue-footed boobies.

Later on in the morning we went snorkelling in the bay and saw sea turtles along with a whole host of weird and wonderfully coloured fish.

Cerro Dragon (Dragon Hill)

View from the beach

Lagoon behind the beach

Land iguana

Land iguana

Land iguana

Ismael

Cactus trees

Flowering cactus

View of our cruise boat from the island

Flamingo

Flamingos

Flamingos

Flamingo

Marine iguana

The boat worked it’s way west along the coast to Dragon Hill (named after it’s most prolific resident, the land iguana). After lunch we jumped in the pangas to head to the island for a walk. Here there is no pier, the pangas dropped us on some lava rocks which sit alongside the white beach. Inland the earth was a deep rusty red colour which comes from the oxidised iron in the lava. Here I learned that the trees which looked lifeless on the way to Tortuga Bay were in fact not dead. They are deciduous trees called Palo Santo and appear silver-grey in the dry season and flourish with green leaves in the wet season. They produce a deep red-purple sap which makes them look almost like they are  bleeding and is used to make dye. I could only imagine how different the landscape would look in the wet season. On the way we came a across a lagoon with flamingos.

Galapagos is officially desert as it rains less than 200mm per annum here. There is only one island where fresh water can be reliably found year round, Floreana. Life on the islands has evolved to deal with the harsh environment. Giant tortoises can go for as long as 18 months without food or water, they hydrate themselves by eating the cactus which store water; marine iguanas drink sea water and ‘spit’ the salt from their nostrils.

We’re in Galapagos!

Friday 1st November 2013

Cotopaxi

Yellow warbler

Marine iguana

Lava gull

Brown pelicans, a lava gull and a heron

Sea lion

Lobster

Our fourth night in Quito was our last. We woke at 4am to catch a 6am flight. We flew to Guyaquil, waited on the plane for an hour, while some passengers left and others boarded, and arrived in Baltra (a small island north of Isla Santa Cruz) at 10am local time. Galapagos is 1000km west of the coast of Ecuador and an hour behind. After arriving in Baltra airport, we took a bus and then a water taxi to the northern port on Santa Cruz. From there, it was a good couple of hours on a bus to Puerto Ayora, on the southern coast of the Island. On the journey the island did not look anywhere near as lush as I expected, but I guess that was me being naive as I really didn’t know much about the geology of the islands before our trip.

On arrival at Puerto Ayora, famished, we had lunch in the first place we found and then got a taxi to our hostel. Accommodation on the islands is relatively expensive; a shared room costs almost double the amount we paid for a private room in Quito. Since it was only one night before our first class cruise we opted for our first night in a shared room. On arrival at the hostel we were greeted by Kevin, the hostel owner, who I later realised reminded me a bit of Forrest Gump. He gave us the spiel about the hostel and then offered to give us a tour around town. 10 minutes later he took us and a few others on the tour in a couple of taxis, complete with walkie-talkie and showed us all the useful places (laundry, cash machines, nice restaurants, bars, etc.).

The walk through town was lovely. I had expected the place to be bustling with tourists but it wasn’t. Puerto Ayora couldn’t be more different to Quito. It’s a tiny, sleepy little port which feels like a beach town, and yet the largest town in all of Galapagos. The pier is only big enough for speed boats, pangas and alike which ferry up to eight passengers at a time people between the islands and cruise boats (which anchor a distance away) via the pier. The cruise boats are also pretty small in general, they have a maximum legal tourist capacity per licensed guide of 16 on Galapagos so while you can get larger capacity boats (with up to 100 passenger capacity and so more than one guide on board), they are rare and we didn’t see any during our time on the islands.

Charles Darwin Drive is the main street which runs almost across the whole town along the coast. It has cute little shops, bars and restaurants running along it and at the top is the Charles Darwin Station, a giant tortoise breeding centre. You can walk across the whole town at a leisurely pace in about 20 minutes and along Charles Darwin Drive in 10; for our tour of the town with Kevin, we walked the length of it. We didn’t realise that on that short walk we would see, brown pelicans, great blue herons, frigate birds, lava gulls, yellow warblers, marine iguanas and sea lions, otherwise we would have taken our camera!

Kevin explained that there was no violent crime in the town and we could get drunk and walk back to the hostel at any time of the day and feel completely safe. After spending three days in Quito with no jewellery on and wondering if it was safe to walk back to the hotel at night, that was nice to hear. By the end of our tour we were looking forward to spending more time on the islands.

Afterwards we headed back to the hostel to shower, change and (much to the delight of my ever-growing swankle) spent a relaxing evening in town, drinking caipirinha, looking over the ocean.