Susan's Galapagos Photo Journal, 2006

This photo journal was lost to me for many years. I am posting it 9 years after my visit to the Galapagos after finally managing to resurrect the photos and commentary from my computer archives.

After my Ecuador Earthwatch, the team drove back to Guayaquil from the Cerros de Colonche (Colonche Hills Cloud Forest), and then I flew to Baltra in the Galapagos archipelago, about 800 miles from Ecuador.

My plane landed on Baltra, the small island just above Santa Cruz

I actually took this pic when leaving for Quito rather than arriving at Baltra. I was as sick as the proverbial dog on the flight to Baltra and remained sick for the first 2 days of the cruise--Chikungunya Virus I think. The same mosquito borne malaise got our cook and Principal Investigator in the cloud forest on the last days of the Earthwatch Expedition. I got off the plane, met our naturalist, and just pushed on for these initial days.

Our naturalist met us at the airport where we took a bus from the airport to our boat. This mother and pup were snoozing on the bench before the steps to the boat launch (where we boarded our panga [zodiac] and were ferried out to our boat). The two comprise the theme of this blog: “parents and babies.”

Our boat, Samba, certainly not the most beautiful of crafts . . . as you can tell from others around us . . . 

. . . such as this fully rigged sailing ship . . . 

. . . and this tidy little sailboat.

. . . but roomy, comfortable and with a very affable crew. (l to r) Captain Isaak; panga driver and deckhand Juan; first engineer Jose (behind Jimmy, our naturalist); dining room server and cabin boy, Wilmer (in black tie); and cook, Freddy. This picture was taken at our equator crossing party.

Our naturalist, Jimmy, had been a freelance naturalist in the Galapagos for 25 years; thus, he was extremely knowledgeable but a little canned and cut and dried . . . had a good sense of humor though and was a dive master so took us to great places to snorkel.

Nigel wearing my bandanna to protect his bald head from the sun.

Me, Reiner and Kirsten, Germany. This photo was taken on Day 1 and I am burning

 up with fever and feeling awful

After boarding Samba, we were served a sumptuous lunch while motoring to North Seymour Island, our first anchorage. That’s Stan & Claire of the U.K., bottom left. I am still running a high fever and feeling lousy, but carry on.

On North Seymour, we climbed this hill and saw all sorts of birds -- masked boobies, brown noddy terns, red-billed tropicbirds, magnificent frigatebirds, swallow-tailed gulls, brown pelicans, etc. -- flying in the updrafts of the cliffs. Also saw our first marine iguanas. We would see many more before the tour ended—think I took 100 pix of iguanas alone. That’s an Opuntia cactus, to the right in the photo above and below. . .  

Here are some more Opuntia cactus in what is called the Palo Santa Forest. Note the two marine iguanas on the rocks above the little white “stop” sign. These stop’s were all along the trails to prevent tourists from trampling the environment. One can only go on the wild islands (those with no human populations) with a naturalist and they are rightly very strict about behavior while on the islands

Opuntia cactus blossoms

Red-billed Tropicbird (Internet)

Red-billed Tropicbird nesting (Internet)

Brown Noddy and chick; the birds and animals have no fear of humans and let you walk right up to them

Next we stopped at two different anchorages on Santa Cruz Island, a populated island and home of the Charles Darwin Research Center. This is a shot of some lava gulls near the anchorage. They are funny gulls and actually light on the backs of  brown pelicans so that they can snatch any food that dribbles out of the pelicans’ beaks.

Speaking of brown pelicans . . .  they often swam near the boat at our Santa Cruz anchorages.

Darwin Research Center on Santa Cruz

Darwin's finches have many other evolutionary tales to tell. Darwin himself used the finches in the The Voyage of the Beagle to quietly announce the theory of evolution: “Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.”

As such, it is entirely appropriate that these small birds carry the name of the scientist who gave the theory of evolution to the world, and who put their island home on the intellectual map. (Photos above and most copy--Internet)

Santa Cruz main street. Notice the flame trees and yellow-flowered flamboyant trees.

Beautiful yellow flowering flamboyant trees abounded in Santa Cruz’s retail and residential district.

And this flame tree, a native of Africa but growing all over Ecuador and in populated areas of the Galapagos. I did not notice the white object in the photo until I got home. I think it is the top of a tombstone.

The dead are buried above ground on the Galapagos Islands and in Ecuador proper. Cemeteries in Ecuador are short of space, so graves are occupied for 10-year stretches (plenty of time for the soul to reach Heaven) and then the bones are pulverized and given to the family so that someone else’s soul can seek heaven over the next 10 years. Judging by the inscription on the grave to the left, this does not appear to be the case on the Galapagos Islands. This cemetery on Santa Cruz was pristine.

A marine iguana guarding the “Welcome to the Galapagos” sign

Marine iguanas came in several colors, depending on the island.
This Santa Cruz lizard is dark grey. 

Marine iguana from a different island. The different colors were all part of the evolutionary adaptation.

This is a large land iguana, not a marine iguana

Female lava lizard

Female lava lizard, a better photo from the Internet

Male lava lizard. We joked about bird and animal names. If we didn’t know a name, it was a good guess to add “Galapagos” or “Lava” to its common name, e.g., lava lizard, Galapagos lizard, lava gull, Galapagos tortoise, Galapagos finch etc.

More marine iguanas sunbathing at our Academy Bay anchorage at Santa Cruz

These marine iguanas were at a later anchorage on Fernandina.
This one posed so beautifully.

Galapagos dove on James Island

Magnificent Frigatebird. Before my trip to the Galapagos, I had seen only a couple of frigatebirds high in the sky above Florida. In Ecuador and the Galapagos they are as numerous as gulls. This is a male in non breeding plumage.

This is a female Magnificent Frigatebird. They are large birds about 3 feet long with a wingspan of 7.5 feet or so.

Much later in the tour: This fishing boat is preparing its catch on a platform off the back. They came to the Samba in a smaller boat and sold our cook some fresh fish. The frigate birds made a good photo against the setting sun. If you look closely, you can also see hundreds of frigate birds in the sky above the island to the right. At first I thought that they were preparing to roost, but later learned that these birds sleep on the wing. The birds sleep "one minute at a time throughout the day and night for roughly a total of 12 hours each day.  While sleeping mid-flight these birds don't go completely on autopilot. They often sleep with only one side of their brain, leaving the other side awake." (Wikipedia)

Magnificent  frigatebird nesting colony. That’s a waved albatross with the white head left. Note all the frigatebirds in the sky.

Male frigatebirds in courtship behavior extending their red pouches and bending their heads back. They seem to have been successful. That female is exposing her eye white and looking interested. (Internet)

Male frigatebird in courting display (Internet)

The results of all this courtship, a frigatebird chick. (Internet)

Masked Booby

Masked Booby pair beginning courtship

Masked Booby chick

Blue-footed Boobies beginning courtship. They groom each other and bend their heads in synchronized bobs.

Blue-footed Boobies mating.

Male Blue-footed Booby, displaying after mating . . . or is he crowing?

Blues with babe

Flamingo lagoon on Floreana Island

These flamingos are on Isabella in an oasis in the lava fields.

We spotted this washed up egg on the shore of the Floreana Island lagoon and just as Jimmy was explaining that he’d never seen a flamingo baby, we spotted a fluffy grey ball of a baby on the lagoon island . . . too far away for my camera. The photo below is from the Internet but I thought it adorable.

Flamingo baby getting lessons in how to stand on one leg. 

Mockingbird begging for fresh water. Apparently past visitors had given them water from their water bottles so humans meant "water." We were told not to humor them. 

Congregation of mockingbirds; they begged and begged for water and were quite persistent, even standing on my knee.

Nest on Floreana as we climbed a trail above the flamingo lagoon

Galapagos penguins on Isabela Island. Who would have thought to see flamingos and penguins in the same general area? Galapagos Penguins have the smallest breeding range and population size of any penguin, with less than a thousand breeding pairs. They occur only in the Galapagos Islands, with 90% of the population being restricted to the western islands of Fernandina and Isabela.

Galapagos Penguins are the smallest of the South American penguins, with an average length of less than 19.5 inches, and an average weight of less than 5.5 pounds.

The main problem that Galapagos Penguins face in relation to weather, is from the strong sun. Entering the water enables penguins to cool off, but when on land they have a number of behavioral adaptations that help them to keep cool. Birds can lose heat from the exposed areas of skin on their feet, and the underparts of their flippers, aided by increases in blood flow to these areas. Birds are often seen standing with out-stretched flippers, hunched forward to shade their feet from the sun. They also lose heat by evaporation from the throat and airways through panting.

Striated heron on mangrove roots

Galapagos Hawk

Galapagos Hawk among marine iguanas

Flightless cormorants on Isla Fernandina

Brooding female flightless cormorant

The reason flightless cormorants are flightless—those wings could never lift that body. Those are sea lions in the water.

Waved albatross couple. . . this pic from the Internet.

We saw only one of these birds whose mating period was over.

Waved albatross chick in funky hairdo (Internet)

Sally Lightfoot crabs, one of the few animals that showed any wariness of humans. This because they had been harvested as food in earlier times.

The Sally Lightfoot crabs are quite beautiful with blue underparts and orange shells. When young their shells are speckled dark blue; the older they are, the oranger their shells. These two are wearing sand booties

Adult (orange) and young (blue speckled) Sally Lightfoot crabs

Sea turtle and Sally Lightfoot tracks in the beach sand.

Interesting rock formation at one of the dark sand beaches. Each island's beach was a different color, varying from black to white and shades in between.

Old sea lion male basking in the sun. Many of the islands had populations of sea lions, and one, James Island, had a population of fur seals (really sea lions) also.

My favorite little guy just sacked out on the beach

Sea lion mom and babe after nursing

Welcome to my beach

Just lying around catching some rays

White sand beach at Gardner Bay, Hood Island

Brown sand beach and lava rocks

Lava field with a cactus that has managed to grow

The equator passes through this island, which is Isabela, this northern tip of which looks on a map something like a seahorse. That’s a brown pelican in the air to the left.

Hood Island, where there were the most booby and albatross nesting colonies. 

Can’t remember which island this is but it was interestingly undercut so shaped like a muffin that had overflowed its pan.

The “post office” at Post Office Bay on Floreana Island. The barrel holds a large plastic bag full of post cards to people from around the world. Each visitor sorts through the cards and takes those that are within their immediate city or area for hand delivery. I “mailed” one to Jeff here but someone mailed it to him rather than hand delivering it. Bummer. It came only two weeks after I got home.

Galapagos Tortoise

Galapagos Tortoise

Sea turtle nest holes. It wasn’t the season for them to be nesting.

Sea turtle baby, in keeping with our theme. This pic from the Internet.

Sea turtle. These swam with us as you will see in the underwater pix coming up soon

Juan ferrying us ashore in the panga

Juan returning to the Samba after dropping us off for snorkeling

Moi a little tuckered after a long snorkeling session

One of my shipmates, Sandy, had brought 6 underwater cameras with her. Her daughter Dianna took this photo of me snorkeling.

And this photo of a sea turtle swimming with us.

This is an Eagle Ray—it is absolutely beautiful. Photo is not Dianna’s but from the Internet.

Parrot fish; one of several we commonly saw (Internet); the following fish pix are all from the Internet but of species we identified

Another Internet photo but we did swim with and see many of these White-tipped Reef Sharks. They ignored us. I have a photo that I took of a white-tipped shark and its baby, in keeping with my theme, but I took it from the panga in a shark nursery in the mangroves, and it would make you seasick to view it.

Sandy’s photo of tiny silvery fish at one of our snorkel sites. There must have been a million of them and I am not exaggerating. They covered the seabed.

Penguin and small fish in a large school

The obligatory sunset photo to end the photo journal.