Galapagos Islands

I spent the last week in Galapagos Islands, a small paradise a thousand kilometers off Ecuador mainland on the equatorial line. The Galapagos archipelago has been fairly untouched from human cruelty during evolution and therewith gives you a good idea what this planet would be like without us--- scary but true. Also, the fact that its islands are so isolated from the continental mainland has allowed the evolution of a whole heap of species that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. It is also the place where the young Charles Darwin proposed the evolution theory by natural selection in 1859, a theory that changed the idea of the creation of species fundamentally. There are several islands to be found spread over a space of about 140000 km2 and the best way to explore them is by boat. I spent 4 days on a sailing boat with a nice little group of people exploring several different islands. We started off on Santa Cruz, where we visited the famous giant tortoises that crawl freely wherever they please. There are hundreds of them, you even find them crossing streets and obviously that can take a while! They are monstrous, heavy, and slow like you would imagine. In the Darwin research center we visited the famous lonesome George, the last of his species that was found on Isla Pinta.  People have tried to isolate his sperm and clone him to rescue his species, so far without any success.

We left the cute little town of Puerto Ayora in the evening, and reached Isla Rabida early in the morning at around 6am. We woke up in total isolation from the rest of the world, no other boat or human being to be seen. We visited the red sand beach of the island, where we were greeted by sea lions dozing around in the beach or shallow water and expecting our arrival. It was amazing to see that they were not bothered by our presence at all, not because they are so used to human beings but actually the opposite, they lived there without human contact for the longest time and didn’t experience any harm from us, therefor remained without fear. We could lie next to them on the beach, and I am sure if you would do that for several days they would most likely include you into their clan snuggling up right next to you. But of course we want to interfere with them as little as possible and therefor always kept a 2m distance. We walked through the island watching several birds and marine iguanas, jumped into the turquoise blue water and snorkeled seeing several rays, white tipped sharks, colorful fish and as a highlight a monstrous big Galapagos shark. We spent the next three days doing similar things on different islands, but all of them had their unique geology and flora and fauna to explore. Some of them were created by tectonic plate movement that pushed them out of the water, others were purely volcanic and we could walk the different kinds of lava. Some of them were really old, other parts were only as old as 130 years with hardly any vegetation at all, demonstrating a good example of the birth of new islands and therewith ecological systems. Everyday, we were in the water together with seals and penguins swimming past us with only a few centimeters of distance, sharks (a bit further away…), rays, loads of colorful fish and sea stars and porcupine fishes. After the 4 day boat cruise I went with a speed boat to Isla Isabella, the biggest islands of Galapagos that holds 5 active volcanoes and territory that is still very poorly explored. For example did people just discover a new species of a huge pink land iguana a few years ago, and most of the guides on Galapagos have not even seen it yet as the territory is only accessible by helicopter. I stayed on that beautiful island for two nights and visited the crater of Volcan Sierra Negra that has a diameter of 10km, which makes it the second largest crater in the world. It erupted last time 2006 and is therewith filled with fairly fresh lava stones with no vegetation. Close to the beach I went to the “kindergarten” or nesting place of the marine iguanas, were you can find hundreds of small iguanas everywhere, you have to watch out they are not running over your feet, its so many. Also there was a place where we could see dozens of white tipped sharks hiding in a bay with warmer water during the rainy season. Just next to the shark bay I was snorkeling in the water together with a seal that was playing with a stick and stayed in a distance of 50cm to me as long as I was in the water. He obviously asked me to play with him, it was an amazing experience!    

Galapagos is like a dream. But you can see that it gets flooded by more and more tourists. The authorities are doing a good job trying to protect it, educating people well to interfere as little as possible, but as always, things have changed since the arrival of human beings. Some of the space is being used as farm land, different plants have been introduced and are now growing uncontrollable such as passion fruits and guava, changing the landscape and the climate for good. People bring insect eggs from the mainland, introducing new species that should not be there, and obviously the arrival of three different airlines a day has an effect onto the place. We can only hope that for once we are successful to protect a unique place like this.