I finished “The Faraway Nearby” (thank you clw! good. wow), and now Ernesto and I are both reading “The Voyage of the Beagle”. How appropriate to read Chuck’s words while we travel through South America, especially the Galapagos. Ernesto actually started a week or so ago, so I’m a bit behind. The preface (to this Second Edition) had a very striking start:
“In an age when everywhere is just a few days’ journey from anywhere else, the very idea of travel has more or less disappeared. Instead, there is tourism. From Disney World to Dahomey, hurdles must be invented and risks constructed amuse the voyager. In the nineteenth century… the idea of putting oneself into real or imagined danger just for fun was almost unknown. That is what makes the narratives of nineteenth century travelers more satisfying than their abundant but pallid modern equivalents.”
Admittedly I read a few chapters then skipped ahead and re-read the chapter on the Galapagos (while actually flying to the Galapagos). I’ve wanted to visit these islands since highschool, so admittedly I’ve lugged some expectations with me...
There is probably a rule about blogging while cranky that is analogous to “Don’t go to bed angry”. Our first day wasn’t great. I am so grateful that Ernesto is such a patient and supportive partner. Both the Quito and Galapagos airports were frustrating, and this is after nine border crossings. There were forms we didn’t have, procedures we didn’t know, cash we didn’t know we needed, incorrect instructions, unlabeled buses, etc. We got to town a little hangry, so we headed right for food, which is crazy overpriced. But not as overpriced as the sunscreen we forgot: cheapest bottle at the farmacia/supermercado was $22. And it was a half bottle. Say nothing of the $12 six pack of 4%ABV “cheap” beer, the $2.50 6 ounce coffee, or the $25 personal pizza. After, we checked into Hotel Suck Fest, who advertises a suite of services they don’t actually provide. The lies about the airport shuttle and wifi and their ridiculous credit card/cash policy I can get over, but when it's 65 degrees outside and I’ve just been snorkeling, I want a shower with hot water. You told me I would be staying in a hotel with hot showers. What's that, only room #9 has a hot water shower? Well then I want room #9. Not joking. We packed up our belongings and got room #9. Ernie may or may not have been exposed to the little bit of New Jersey left in me. Ultimately however, this hotel is just following suit with the financial/customer service rape of the tourists here, so I can’t blame them (although the old man who works here is exempt - he is an adorable mumbler). This is an island chain and the local population pretty much exists to support the infrastructure that makes this kind of “comfortable” tourism possible. They do not have to try hard to provide a service, and E and I can’t blame them for not trying very hard. If our choices are 1) no coffee, 2) mildly expensive instant coffee, and 3) an insanely expensive americano, we are NOT going to choose #1, and we think the millions of Galapagos tourists before us have done the same. In a way it is our fault, as we have trained them to stick it to us. Being here is an affluent privilege, and the local economy is flourishing like a parasite - sucking dollar-by-dollar the hope and joy of geeks everywhere that wanted to come this magical place and experience its endemic flora and fauna.
The stupidest and funniest part of our first day was right before landing in the Galapagos… The stewardess gets on the microphone and makes an announcement (in Spanish), that says something like “To protect the islands from invasive insects and pests, we are now going to treat your carry on luggage. Please stay seated while we open all the overhead bins and fumigate them.” After all bins were open, two stewardesses slowly parade through the aisle with one arm above their head. The aerosol can is on a steady spray, and it makes a fine white mist on the aisle side of every bag. I’m all about protecting an area from invasive species, but come on Ecuador! Either you are spraying some kind of Lysol to give the appearance of fumigating our wheely bags, OR you are really spraying a broad-spectrum pesticide that will actually kill a large variety of insects, fungi, etc. If it is the latter, the Ecuadorian government is apparently OK with administering a known carcinogen in a closed air circulation system in a plane thousands of feet in the air. Bueno.
After the ups and downs of actually getting to Isla Santa Cruz (or Isla Indefatigable, which I still can’t pronounce without really concentrating), the sun was shining so we decided to walk to Tortuga Bay. It is about 2.5 km to the bay, then ½ km along Playa Brava, then around a little trail to Playa Mansa. It is very scenic, and very accessible, so there were lots of people. The trail to the playas was a hoot because the finches and lizards were so plentiful and habituated we literally had to watch where we stepped. Playa Brava (the longest beach in all the Galapagos islands), is lovely, but very devoid of macro-sized life. If I needed a place to study interstitial animals I would come here. The stars of the show in Tortuga Bay are the marine iguanas, and they are stars! Big. Ugly. Spitting. Algae crusted mouths. Funny walk (which I impersonate very well). Black bodies with maybe just a bit of pink or yellow. We would be walking along the trail and then POOF that thing we thought was a stick is a marine iguana. After bumbling about (mostly looking for a place or trail with iguanas but without people) we settled on a spot and watched them for a little while. If you wait, they will come (see YouTube). It was also fun to watch the predictability of the human-iguana interaction. Myself included. Step 1: look. Step 2: pull out camera and take crappy picture. Step 3: pause and move closer for better picture. Step 4: move even closer for even better picture. Step 5: look around for more/something better and move along. The romantic version of these scenes is that epic photo of a marine iguanas face, sort of smiling, with the eye shimmer they get when the sun hits. The reality is a beach with a dozen iguanas and a dozen people with cameras in the animals faces. Iguanas spitting and waiting to cross “the road” of human traffic and get to their sleeping grounds. I love and hate the picture I took of the iguana where you can see the shadow of my iPad. And I straight up hate the high tide mark of Isla Santa Cruz; it is a fine line of microplastic.
Tuesday we had three major excursions. The first was the Santa Cruz Fish Market. It is small, but packed. And not packed with people, but packed with large animals. Pelicans, frigates, giant herons, and sea lions. (See video). It was bizarre, funny, and sad. The wildlife here isn’t wild. This island is a giant petting zoo. Ernesto made the analogy that the sea lions have filled the niche of street perros in the Galapagos. At one point, one of the sea lions got just a bit too close to one of the tunas caught that morning - like a dog who gets just a bit too close to the turkey on Thanksgiving. And just like a Labrador retriever, one of the women working the fish market gave him a gentle little smack on the head!
As we learned later, there are tensions between the local fishermen/local fishing practices and the conservation status of the Galapagos. The Ecuadorian government seems to be making some attempts to educate consumers about the legal size limits of fish to help. It was also pretty stunning to see pelicans so close… we have been seeing pelicans since Baja, Mexico, but only from a distance. There was one today that was napping in a little rock patch next to the fish market. His/her water-eyelid was closing off and on, and then his/her real eyelid would close all sleepy like… S/he was clearly in need of a nap but there was too much commotion at the fish market for that to happen.
Our second stop was the Charles Darwin Research Station. It is at the east end of town and the walk there is very touristy: high ends stores with names like “Evolution” and “Selection”, coffee shops with names like “OMG” (not kidding) and “Booby”, and art and jewelry boutiques that sold gemstones and products not mined or produced for thousands of miles. It was despicable. The amount of plastic crap and things known to be bad for conservation that have “Galapagos” plastered on them is sickening… We had the biggest laugh over the “entrance” to the field station area, where there is an arch and a blue footed booby that clearly mark “the center”; if you stand where one clearly should to capture the moment on film, the background is a shipping container. I had the biggest cry over the visitor’s center itself… While the information they did have was good, and I am stoked they are taking a major interest in conservation and the future, there was not a single placard or exhibit that explained evolution, natural selection, etc. Not a single bit of educational information on what Darwin actually contributed to the realm of biology. Unacceptable. At first I thought maybe they didn’t have room at the facility… they want to focus on today and tomorrow instead of the past/Darwin’s contributions. But when you have a corner area the size of two king sized beds dedicated to “take a selfie inside a tortoise shell”, you have enough room to have an educational exhibit on evolution itself.
One of the buildings at the Research Station is the tortoise breeding facility, where they are trying to rebuild populations of some of the endangered subspecies of giant tortoise. One could argue both sides (i.e., this is a worthwhile endeavor as well as all this money and time should be going to something else), but it's happening so we educated ourselves about it. There are about a half a dozen or so tortoises in captivity. The first few we saw were cute: one was drinking in his little man-made pond and one was laying in the dust under a cactus. But then we kept walking and saw one slowly (duh) making its way towards its brick wall fence. Ernie said, “It's as though they didn’t move fast enough and humans build a brick wall around them.” I took a picture of one peering up and over the brick wall, and I think the picture sums up the bigger theme of this National Park.
Our third adventure, and one we still aren’t sure we were allowed to do, was tidepooling on the west side of Playa de la Estacion. There were no signs telling us we couldn’t, but knowing what I know, if everyone that visited the Galapagos tide pooled, the tide pools would be destroyed. We flipped many rocks (and carefully returned them all), and given the intensity and position of those rocks, we do not think they have been flipped anytime in the recent past. Again, there was nothing stating we couldn’t, but as a National Park, a private research reserve, and an archipelago where the rule is to not go off the path, it was probably implied that we shouldn’t have been there... :/ Maybe we figured we’d done enough good nature Karma things to earn it, or maybe we just didn’t want to question it so we could just do it, but ultimately we just did it. And it was great. All the major phyla, and most of the major classes. Two nudibranchs (both dorids), sea hares (small and large), another unknown (to me) opisthobranch, really great brittle stars, stellar sculpins, and some feisty polychaetes (I brushed up against one and its setae impaled in my knuckle - ouchy). Even if it was “illegal”, it was easily the highlight of my visit to the Galapagos Islands.
And our fourth adventure (after we quickly shoveled down two stale empanadas, because even the cheap street food can be overpriced and shitty here in the Galapagos) was a boat tour of Academy Bay. It was so canned it was silly. 20 minute ride to X, hear a spiel about X, take pictures of X. Repeat for stops Y and Z. We were the only English speakers on the tour, so it was all in Spanish and we stopped trying to understand pretty early. There were however two highlights of the tour. The first was waiting to get on the boat after our first stop, when a blue footed booby flew overhead and showed us his feet. I.e., we have seen lots of blue footed boobies, in fact they were one of the birds we saw from the ferry before we even got on the island. But when they are flying you can’t see their feet, so they just look like brown and white duck things. For whatever reason this individual flew low, just over us, and did a turn-spin thing where he spread his tail and his feet dropped - revealing his gorgeous blue webbed sexy bits to us ever so briefly. The second highlight of the canned tour was one that only those of us on the boat got to see… After the final Z stop of our tour, anyone who wanted to snorkel was given a chance. It was way too cold for me but Ernie braved it along with three other people on our tour (there were 13 total). His beard and mustache are long (time for a trim!) so the seal on his mask wasn’t great, so he had to leave to the group to go to shore and fuss with it. On his way to shore, in between the boat and Ernie, a sea lion went Ernie’s way. It swam behind him and even put his head above water when Ernie got to shore and stood on the rocks. Our narrative is that the sea lion wanted to make sure Ernie was OK, and if he wasn’t the sea lion would have flapped his flippers to give CPR, then after reviving Ernie would have motioned (again with his flippers) to grab on and the sea lion would take him to the boat.
On our third and final day we took a full day tour to Isabella (or Albamarie), the largest island in the Galapagos. It is a non-trivial two hour boat ride there and back, as the swells in some parts were at least 10 if not 15 feet (I guess this is another perk to traveling during peak season -->calm seas). But luckily Ernesto and I were savvy/pushy enough to ensure outdoor seating both directions (as for those who have been on a relatively small boat in choppy water, you know that if you end up indoors in the lower cabin you are guaranteed to puke your guts out the whole way). After we got to Isabella we were eventually greeted by our guide for the afternoon, Edwin Garcia. A handsome Galapagos native, who was both funny and knowledgeable. There was a little tension at first about the stickers, but we all got over it quickly. Tension over stickers? Yep… the entire tour system and shuffling bodies from island to boat to island to bus is done via visual cues of lanyards and stickers. Your lanyard must match your boat and must be returned to the captain before getting off the boat. Upon landing and paying some sort of fee for some small piece of paper, people with pink stickers go here, people with green stickers go there. Our biggest complaint about this system is that most of the gringos are in some sort of quick-dry polyester that stickers do not adhere to, especially when getting misted with ocean spray for a few hours. So most of the stickers find their way directly to the ocean during transit, including mine. When I noticed mine we were gone and that Ernesto’s was barely hanging on, I removed his and put it on the only cotton clothing we had - my knit cap. Upon meeting our guide Edwin, he was not happy Ernesto was not wearing any stickers…. Ernesto explained they fell off on the boat, and it was all very awkward. When we boarded the bus about 10 minutes later, there was a young Asian man traveling alone who apparently put Edwin’s guest count one over the legal guide limit. He stared at the young man and said, very frankly, “Do you have a sticker?”. Ernie and I were probably the only ones who found it funny… one of the world’s top and greatest eco-tourism locations hinging on stickers.
Anyway, the tour itself. The first stop was Laguna de Flamingos. There were about a half dozen, and they were lovely. Far away, but a brilliant pink which indicated that the shrimp in the laguna were plentiful; the flamingos stay as long as there are shrimp. As soon as the shrimp population declines, they fly to Ecuador, returning the following season (also, its the shrimp that makes them pink). Edwin made sure to teach everyone on the tour the difference between endemic, native, and introduced species, and he quizzed us about it at each subsequent stop. The second stop was another tortoise breeding center, but unlike the one at the Darwin Research Station, here we got to see baby giant tortoises. I know all baby animals are cute, but there is something particularly cute about the babies of megafauna. Like baby elephants. Elephants are sooo big and the babies are sooo small. Giant tortoise babies give baby elephants a bit of competition only because of quantity. It is rare to see more than one or two baby elephants in a herd, where reptile babies come in gaggles. Piles of baby giants. Adorbs. After a sit-down lunch at a little restaurant in Puerto Villamil, we took a boat tour to see nothing. It was terribly obvious that we were going to see nothing… As soon as we left the pier, Edwin starts with (in Spanish) “People always ask me, where are the penguins? I say, I don’t know. This is not a zoo, is a National Park”. We rode around, wasted gas, looked for penguins that were not there. Which was fine. Ernie and I do know this is not a zoo (despite how it feels like that sometimes). I guess we just wish the entire industry wouldn’t sell us the “Isabella Penguin” tour when they know damn well we aren’t going to see penguins. How about just selling us the Isabella tour?
The final and best stop of the tour was a little inlet somewhere west of Puerto Villamil where we were allowed to walk on land and snorkel. The trail was probably no more than a half of kilometer, but it was visually stunning. From a distance I thought it was white promised-penguin poop, but it was actually a type of lichen. So immediately there is a stark contrast of the blue water, green plants, black rocks, and white lichens. There were lots marine iguanas and bones from dead sea lions. This trail also has the “Tunnel of Sharks”, which is in fact a rock tunnel area full of white tipped sharks! It is warmer in there, and they don’t like it cold this time of year, so they pile in. With the iguanas and the Sally lightfoots lining each side of the cavern, it was quite a sight. After our group walk, those that wanted to snorkel were given 30 minutes of sea time. It was really cold and overcast and we went into the day thinking we were not going to snorkel (especially given Ernesto’s experience the day before). But ultimately sea turtles trumped temperature; there were sea turtles poking their heads up right next to the boat… we were going in! The visibility wasn’t outstanding, but it was good enough to see the critters that were around us. Pencil urchins, sea cucumbers, lots of sculpins and damsels. Brilliant pink and blue parrotfish. The fish highlight was definitely the ~2 foot long pufferfish. And yes! We got to be next to sea turtles. They are so much bigger than I expected, almost intimidating. We got one really nice moment watching one forage on some algae… Bueno. There were probably eight or so snorkeling (the other eight or so just hung on the boat), and for those of us in the water, Edwin stood on the bow of the boat, on the lookout for critters. When he saw a sea turtle or sea lion he would shout out to the closest floating, sort of kicking blob below. Ernesto and I were the farthest away at one point (because we were easily the best swimmers) and I pop my head up to orient myself (as there was a boundary we weren’t to go past). “Sea lion 15m ahead of you!”, he shouts to me. I give a thumbs up, motion to Ernesto, and we head towards it. Again, the visibility was not outstanding and we had no sense of how fast we were moving, so the moment kind of built up as far as when and where the sea lion would appear, if it was even going to still be there at all. I was kind of expecting it at the surface, but it was just floating about 2 meters down, upside down, right there! His eyes were closed when we first saw him (it was a young male), but as he came into view of us and we came into view of him, he opened his eyes and swam right towards us. I let out a gasp of some sort (I think you can hear it in the video). And he continued to swim around us. It isn’t Nat Geo quality, but I love the picture of him looking up at Ernesto. right before he swam underneath him. My narrative is that it is the same sea lion from yesterday; he swam from Santa Cruz to Isabela to, again, make sure Ernesto was OK. Ha! And then as a final treat, when we were done snorkeling and headed back to the pier, a gorgeous male blue footed booby, sitting and preening and his bright blue feet plainly and clearly in view. Bueno.
Ultimately, despite the economic cost:benefit ratio, we are happy we decided to visit another island. For me, one of the biggest benefits was that I gained a greater appreciation for the sense of scale here. Take Isabella for example. It is the largest island, so it offers the most coast. There are eleven legal places to snorkel, and each either equal to or smaller than a soccer field. I don’t know the square meters, but this must be less than 1%. And this made me less sad and cranky about the zoo factor. Is this the present and future of eco-tourism?
I always justified (to myself, and probably others) that the benefits of ecotourism outweighed the costs because of two hopeful ingredients. The first is that there was some physiological level of “earning” the experience. Maybe a long, arduous hike - way into to the backcountry of Glacier National Park with blisters on both heels. Or maybe that two hour wait in the hot African sun, tsetse flies getting you about every ten minutes, waiting for the lions to copulate again. Or maybe it was mentally earned instead of physically, where many years of grueling away as a graduate student was what earned your ticket to your close encounters with the birds in Costa Rica. Here in the Galapagos, you do not have to earn the actual wildlife encounter. In fact, in some places you have to try and avoid the wildlife. Many iguanas are found with missing and regenerated tails, and Edwin told me many are from careless tourists stepping on them. On the pier, the sea lions are not only lining the walkways, they actually jump up on the benches where humans are to sit and wait for their boat. How are we to keep two meters from them while also standing in the line we have to stand in to get on the boat? And to be fair, the animals here are “naturally” tame. The frigates did not become habituated to the fish market, they were never afraid of the fish market to begin with. Even Darwin wrote about the tameness of the animals here (quote is a little out of order for effect): “A gun is almost superfluous, for with the the muzzle I pushed a hawk off a branch… Finches, wrens, … the dove and carrion-buzzard; all of them (can be) approached sufficiently near to be killed with a switch, and sometimes, as I myself tried, with a cap or hat” :0
The second ingredient that I think is necessary to be defined as a valuable eco-tourism experience has to do with the tourist him/herself. Ideally the person who experienced the elephant or macaw or kangaroo would take that experience with them, and hopefully do something (small or large) that was less about them and more about their local or global biological systems. And then when enough people had these magical moments with nature, there could be a real, productive, global shift into giving a fuck. Without interviewing each one, it is impossible to say how each tourist is affected by their experiences with animals. For those that sit and watch, wait and listen, smile and move gently, I can hazard a good guess that they were positively affected by what they experienced. For others, it is harder to understand what it is they wanted and received out of the interaction. For example, on Tortuga Bay I watched a young woman take off her cover up and, in her mini bikini, lay down on a branch next to a sea lion. She assumed a pose that was on par with the 2016 Sports Illustrated centerfold. As another example, I have seen a very fit and sun kissed young man take a selfie while flexing in front of an iguana. Why was he flexing? Was he going to punch the iguana? Did the iguana do something that made him feel he needed to demonstrate his masculinity? Between the selfies and the poses - it's like their time here is analogous to right after they broke the pinata. They scramble so frantically to collect the sweet moments they don't’ even know what they are collecting. As a steward of ethology and evolution, it is hard to see those tourist experiences as respectable because it is really hard to imagine the ecological experience they are taking with them. As Ernie says, there are iguanas here have more of an internet presence than he does.
Ernie nailed it when it put together some thoughts of Darwin’s with what he has seen in the Galapagos… Back then, as the preface of the Voyage noted, travel for the sake of travel was nonexistent. In fact, Charles writes about how, in the early to mid 1800’s, if a traveler showed up at your door (either in England or anywhere in South America), the host was expected to welcome you, feed you, and make a bed for you. This was because being a traveler required some sophistication; not just anyone could travel from England to Brazil or vice versa. It is true that this level of sophistication was likely almost exclusively achieved in the upper class/wealthy folks, but it still required a level of experience or education. And this experience was respected, because those people were (presumably) doing things to make the world a better place for all people, so hosting travelers was the moral and selfish and altruistic thing to do. Today, there is no sophistication or experience required to travel. One must do nothing to earn travel. One must have cash or a credit card.
(Pause)
We are back in Quito. The bikes are safe and with some good Wifi again, we have a planned route South.
Entonces… maybe all of this is just one long diatribe and/or displaced anger because I’m pissed off that I lost my sweatshirt in the Galapagos. My one and only sweatshirt that packed down so very small I could justify taking it with me as one of eight pieces of clothing. Grr.
“In an age when everywhere is just a few days’ journey from anywhere else, the very idea of travel has more or less disappeared. Instead, there is tourism. From Disney World to Dahomey, hurdles must be invented and risks constructed amuse the voyager. In the nineteenth century… the idea of putting oneself into real or imagined danger just for fun was almost unknown. That is what makes the narratives of nineteenth century travelers more satisfying than their abundant but pallid modern equivalents.”
Admittedly I read a few chapters then skipped ahead and re-read the chapter on the Galapagos (while actually flying to the Galapagos). I’ve wanted to visit these islands since highschool, so admittedly I’ve lugged some expectations with me...
There is probably a rule about blogging while cranky that is analogous to “Don’t go to bed angry”. Our first day wasn’t great. I am so grateful that Ernesto is such a patient and supportive partner. Both the Quito and Galapagos airports were frustrating, and this is after nine border crossings. There were forms we didn’t have, procedures we didn’t know, cash we didn’t know we needed, incorrect instructions, unlabeled buses, etc. We got to town a little hangry, so we headed right for food, which is crazy overpriced. But not as overpriced as the sunscreen we forgot: cheapest bottle at the farmacia/supermercado was $22. And it was a half bottle. Say nothing of the $12 six pack of 4%ABV “cheap” beer, the $2.50 6 ounce coffee, or the $25 personal pizza. After, we checked into Hotel Suck Fest, who advertises a suite of services they don’t actually provide. The lies about the airport shuttle and wifi and their ridiculous credit card/cash policy I can get over, but when it's 65 degrees outside and I’ve just been snorkeling, I want a shower with hot water. You told me I would be staying in a hotel with hot showers. What's that, only room #9 has a hot water shower? Well then I want room #9. Not joking. We packed up our belongings and got room #9. Ernie may or may not have been exposed to the little bit of New Jersey left in me. Ultimately however, this hotel is just following suit with the financial/customer service rape of the tourists here, so I can’t blame them (although the old man who works here is exempt - he is an adorable mumbler). This is an island chain and the local population pretty much exists to support the infrastructure that makes this kind of “comfortable” tourism possible. They do not have to try hard to provide a service, and E and I can’t blame them for not trying very hard. If our choices are 1) no coffee, 2) mildly expensive instant coffee, and 3) an insanely expensive americano, we are NOT going to choose #1, and we think the millions of Galapagos tourists before us have done the same. In a way it is our fault, as we have trained them to stick it to us. Being here is an affluent privilege, and the local economy is flourishing like a parasite - sucking dollar-by-dollar the hope and joy of geeks everywhere that wanted to come this magical place and experience its endemic flora and fauna.
The stupidest and funniest part of our first day was right before landing in the Galapagos… The stewardess gets on the microphone and makes an announcement (in Spanish), that says something like “To protect the islands from invasive insects and pests, we are now going to treat your carry on luggage. Please stay seated while we open all the overhead bins and fumigate them.” After all bins were open, two stewardesses slowly parade through the aisle with one arm above their head. The aerosol can is on a steady spray, and it makes a fine white mist on the aisle side of every bag. I’m all about protecting an area from invasive species, but come on Ecuador! Either you are spraying some kind of Lysol to give the appearance of fumigating our wheely bags, OR you are really spraying a broad-spectrum pesticide that will actually kill a large variety of insects, fungi, etc. If it is the latter, the Ecuadorian government is apparently OK with administering a known carcinogen in a closed air circulation system in a plane thousands of feet in the air. Bueno.
After the ups and downs of actually getting to Isla Santa Cruz (or Isla Indefatigable, which I still can’t pronounce without really concentrating), the sun was shining so we decided to walk to Tortuga Bay. It is about 2.5 km to the bay, then ½ km along Playa Brava, then around a little trail to Playa Mansa. It is very scenic, and very accessible, so there were lots of people. The trail to the playas was a hoot because the finches and lizards were so plentiful and habituated we literally had to watch where we stepped. Playa Brava (the longest beach in all the Galapagos islands), is lovely, but very devoid of macro-sized life. If I needed a place to study interstitial animals I would come here. The stars of the show in Tortuga Bay are the marine iguanas, and they are stars! Big. Ugly. Spitting. Algae crusted mouths. Funny walk (which I impersonate very well). Black bodies with maybe just a bit of pink or yellow. We would be walking along the trail and then POOF that thing we thought was a stick is a marine iguana. After bumbling about (mostly looking for a place or trail with iguanas but without people) we settled on a spot and watched them for a little while. If you wait, they will come (see YouTube). It was also fun to watch the predictability of the human-iguana interaction. Myself included. Step 1: look. Step 2: pull out camera and take crappy picture. Step 3: pause and move closer for better picture. Step 4: move even closer for even better picture. Step 5: look around for more/something better and move along. The romantic version of these scenes is that epic photo of a marine iguanas face, sort of smiling, with the eye shimmer they get when the sun hits. The reality is a beach with a dozen iguanas and a dozen people with cameras in the animals faces. Iguanas spitting and waiting to cross “the road” of human traffic and get to their sleeping grounds. I love and hate the picture I took of the iguana where you can see the shadow of my iPad. And I straight up hate the high tide mark of Isla Santa Cruz; it is a fine line of microplastic.
Tuesday we had three major excursions. The first was the Santa Cruz Fish Market. It is small, but packed. And not packed with people, but packed with large animals. Pelicans, frigates, giant herons, and sea lions. (See video). It was bizarre, funny, and sad. The wildlife here isn’t wild. This island is a giant petting zoo. Ernesto made the analogy that the sea lions have filled the niche of street perros in the Galapagos. At one point, one of the sea lions got just a bit too close to one of the tunas caught that morning - like a dog who gets just a bit too close to the turkey on Thanksgiving. And just like a Labrador retriever, one of the women working the fish market gave him a gentle little smack on the head!
As we learned later, there are tensions between the local fishermen/local fishing practices and the conservation status of the Galapagos. The Ecuadorian government seems to be making some attempts to educate consumers about the legal size limits of fish to help. It was also pretty stunning to see pelicans so close… we have been seeing pelicans since Baja, Mexico, but only from a distance. There was one today that was napping in a little rock patch next to the fish market. His/her water-eyelid was closing off and on, and then his/her real eyelid would close all sleepy like… S/he was clearly in need of a nap but there was too much commotion at the fish market for that to happen.
Our second stop was the Charles Darwin Research Station. It is at the east end of town and the walk there is very touristy: high ends stores with names like “Evolution” and “Selection”, coffee shops with names like “OMG” (not kidding) and “Booby”, and art and jewelry boutiques that sold gemstones and products not mined or produced for thousands of miles. It was despicable. The amount of plastic crap and things known to be bad for conservation that have “Galapagos” plastered on them is sickening… We had the biggest laugh over the “entrance” to the field station area, where there is an arch and a blue footed booby that clearly mark “the center”; if you stand where one clearly should to capture the moment on film, the background is a shipping container. I had the biggest cry over the visitor’s center itself… While the information they did have was good, and I am stoked they are taking a major interest in conservation and the future, there was not a single placard or exhibit that explained evolution, natural selection, etc. Not a single bit of educational information on what Darwin actually contributed to the realm of biology. Unacceptable. At first I thought maybe they didn’t have room at the facility… they want to focus on today and tomorrow instead of the past/Darwin’s contributions. But when you have a corner area the size of two king sized beds dedicated to “take a selfie inside a tortoise shell”, you have enough room to have an educational exhibit on evolution itself.
One of the buildings at the Research Station is the tortoise breeding facility, where they are trying to rebuild populations of some of the endangered subspecies of giant tortoise. One could argue both sides (i.e., this is a worthwhile endeavor as well as all this money and time should be going to something else), but it's happening so we educated ourselves about it. There are about a half a dozen or so tortoises in captivity. The first few we saw were cute: one was drinking in his little man-made pond and one was laying in the dust under a cactus. But then we kept walking and saw one slowly (duh) making its way towards its brick wall fence. Ernie said, “It's as though they didn’t move fast enough and humans build a brick wall around them.” I took a picture of one peering up and over the brick wall, and I think the picture sums up the bigger theme of this National Park.
Our third adventure, and one we still aren’t sure we were allowed to do, was tidepooling on the west side of Playa de la Estacion. There were no signs telling us we couldn’t, but knowing what I know, if everyone that visited the Galapagos tide pooled, the tide pools would be destroyed. We flipped many rocks (and carefully returned them all), and given the intensity and position of those rocks, we do not think they have been flipped anytime in the recent past. Again, there was nothing stating we couldn’t, but as a National Park, a private research reserve, and an archipelago where the rule is to not go off the path, it was probably implied that we shouldn’t have been there... :/ Maybe we figured we’d done enough good nature Karma things to earn it, or maybe we just didn’t want to question it so we could just do it, but ultimately we just did it. And it was great. All the major phyla, and most of the major classes. Two nudibranchs (both dorids), sea hares (small and large), another unknown (to me) opisthobranch, really great brittle stars, stellar sculpins, and some feisty polychaetes (I brushed up against one and its setae impaled in my knuckle - ouchy). Even if it was “illegal”, it was easily the highlight of my visit to the Galapagos Islands.
And our fourth adventure (after we quickly shoveled down two stale empanadas, because even the cheap street food can be overpriced and shitty here in the Galapagos) was a boat tour of Academy Bay. It was so canned it was silly. 20 minute ride to X, hear a spiel about X, take pictures of X. Repeat for stops Y and Z. We were the only English speakers on the tour, so it was all in Spanish and we stopped trying to understand pretty early. There were however two highlights of the tour. The first was waiting to get on the boat after our first stop, when a blue footed booby flew overhead and showed us his feet. I.e., we have seen lots of blue footed boobies, in fact they were one of the birds we saw from the ferry before we even got on the island. But when they are flying you can’t see their feet, so they just look like brown and white duck things. For whatever reason this individual flew low, just over us, and did a turn-spin thing where he spread his tail and his feet dropped - revealing his gorgeous blue webbed sexy bits to us ever so briefly. The second highlight of the canned tour was one that only those of us on the boat got to see… After the final Z stop of our tour, anyone who wanted to snorkel was given a chance. It was way too cold for me but Ernie braved it along with three other people on our tour (there were 13 total). His beard and mustache are long (time for a trim!) so the seal on his mask wasn’t great, so he had to leave to the group to go to shore and fuss with it. On his way to shore, in between the boat and Ernie, a sea lion went Ernie’s way. It swam behind him and even put his head above water when Ernie got to shore and stood on the rocks. Our narrative is that the sea lion wanted to make sure Ernie was OK, and if he wasn’t the sea lion would have flapped his flippers to give CPR, then after reviving Ernie would have motioned (again with his flippers) to grab on and the sea lion would take him to the boat.
On our third and final day we took a full day tour to Isabella (or Albamarie), the largest island in the Galapagos. It is a non-trivial two hour boat ride there and back, as the swells in some parts were at least 10 if not 15 feet (I guess this is another perk to traveling during peak season -->calm seas). But luckily Ernesto and I were savvy/pushy enough to ensure outdoor seating both directions (as for those who have been on a relatively small boat in choppy water, you know that if you end up indoors in the lower cabin you are guaranteed to puke your guts out the whole way). After we got to Isabella we were eventually greeted by our guide for the afternoon, Edwin Garcia. A handsome Galapagos native, who was both funny and knowledgeable. There was a little tension at first about the stickers, but we all got over it quickly. Tension over stickers? Yep… the entire tour system and shuffling bodies from island to boat to island to bus is done via visual cues of lanyards and stickers. Your lanyard must match your boat and must be returned to the captain before getting off the boat. Upon landing and paying some sort of fee for some small piece of paper, people with pink stickers go here, people with green stickers go there. Our biggest complaint about this system is that most of the gringos are in some sort of quick-dry polyester that stickers do not adhere to, especially when getting misted with ocean spray for a few hours. So most of the stickers find their way directly to the ocean during transit, including mine. When I noticed mine we were gone and that Ernesto’s was barely hanging on, I removed his and put it on the only cotton clothing we had - my knit cap. Upon meeting our guide Edwin, he was not happy Ernesto was not wearing any stickers…. Ernesto explained they fell off on the boat, and it was all very awkward. When we boarded the bus about 10 minutes later, there was a young Asian man traveling alone who apparently put Edwin’s guest count one over the legal guide limit. He stared at the young man and said, very frankly, “Do you have a sticker?”. Ernie and I were probably the only ones who found it funny… one of the world’s top and greatest eco-tourism locations hinging on stickers.
Anyway, the tour itself. The first stop was Laguna de Flamingos. There were about a half dozen, and they were lovely. Far away, but a brilliant pink which indicated that the shrimp in the laguna were plentiful; the flamingos stay as long as there are shrimp. As soon as the shrimp population declines, they fly to Ecuador, returning the following season (also, its the shrimp that makes them pink). Edwin made sure to teach everyone on the tour the difference between endemic, native, and introduced species, and he quizzed us about it at each subsequent stop. The second stop was another tortoise breeding center, but unlike the one at the Darwin Research Station, here we got to see baby giant tortoises. I know all baby animals are cute, but there is something particularly cute about the babies of megafauna. Like baby elephants. Elephants are sooo big and the babies are sooo small. Giant tortoise babies give baby elephants a bit of competition only because of quantity. It is rare to see more than one or two baby elephants in a herd, where reptile babies come in gaggles. Piles of baby giants. Adorbs. After a sit-down lunch at a little restaurant in Puerto Villamil, we took a boat tour to see nothing. It was terribly obvious that we were going to see nothing… As soon as we left the pier, Edwin starts with (in Spanish) “People always ask me, where are the penguins? I say, I don’t know. This is not a zoo, is a National Park”. We rode around, wasted gas, looked for penguins that were not there. Which was fine. Ernie and I do know this is not a zoo (despite how it feels like that sometimes). I guess we just wish the entire industry wouldn’t sell us the “Isabella Penguin” tour when they know damn well we aren’t going to see penguins. How about just selling us the Isabella tour?
The final and best stop of the tour was a little inlet somewhere west of Puerto Villamil where we were allowed to walk on land and snorkel. The trail was probably no more than a half of kilometer, but it was visually stunning. From a distance I thought it was white promised-penguin poop, but it was actually a type of lichen. So immediately there is a stark contrast of the blue water, green plants, black rocks, and white lichens. There were lots marine iguanas and bones from dead sea lions. This trail also has the “Tunnel of Sharks”, which is in fact a rock tunnel area full of white tipped sharks! It is warmer in there, and they don’t like it cold this time of year, so they pile in. With the iguanas and the Sally lightfoots lining each side of the cavern, it was quite a sight. After our group walk, those that wanted to snorkel were given 30 minutes of sea time. It was really cold and overcast and we went into the day thinking we were not going to snorkel (especially given Ernesto’s experience the day before). But ultimately sea turtles trumped temperature; there were sea turtles poking their heads up right next to the boat… we were going in! The visibility wasn’t outstanding, but it was good enough to see the critters that were around us. Pencil urchins, sea cucumbers, lots of sculpins and damsels. Brilliant pink and blue parrotfish. The fish highlight was definitely the ~2 foot long pufferfish. And yes! We got to be next to sea turtles. They are so much bigger than I expected, almost intimidating. We got one really nice moment watching one forage on some algae… Bueno. There were probably eight or so snorkeling (the other eight or so just hung on the boat), and for those of us in the water, Edwin stood on the bow of the boat, on the lookout for critters. When he saw a sea turtle or sea lion he would shout out to the closest floating, sort of kicking blob below. Ernesto and I were the farthest away at one point (because we were easily the best swimmers) and I pop my head up to orient myself (as there was a boundary we weren’t to go past). “Sea lion 15m ahead of you!”, he shouts to me. I give a thumbs up, motion to Ernesto, and we head towards it. Again, the visibility was not outstanding and we had no sense of how fast we were moving, so the moment kind of built up as far as when and where the sea lion would appear, if it was even going to still be there at all. I was kind of expecting it at the surface, but it was just floating about 2 meters down, upside down, right there! His eyes were closed when we first saw him (it was a young male), but as he came into view of us and we came into view of him, he opened his eyes and swam right towards us. I let out a gasp of some sort (I think you can hear it in the video). And he continued to swim around us. It isn’t Nat Geo quality, but I love the picture of him looking up at Ernesto. right before he swam underneath him. My narrative is that it is the same sea lion from yesterday; he swam from Santa Cruz to Isabela to, again, make sure Ernesto was OK. Ha! And then as a final treat, when we were done snorkeling and headed back to the pier, a gorgeous male blue footed booby, sitting and preening and his bright blue feet plainly and clearly in view. Bueno.
Ultimately, despite the economic cost:benefit ratio, we are happy we decided to visit another island. For me, one of the biggest benefits was that I gained a greater appreciation for the sense of scale here. Take Isabella for example. It is the largest island, so it offers the most coast. There are eleven legal places to snorkel, and each either equal to or smaller than a soccer field. I don’t know the square meters, but this must be less than 1%. And this made me less sad and cranky about the zoo factor. Is this the present and future of eco-tourism?
I always justified (to myself, and probably others) that the benefits of ecotourism outweighed the costs because of two hopeful ingredients. The first is that there was some physiological level of “earning” the experience. Maybe a long, arduous hike - way into to the backcountry of Glacier National Park with blisters on both heels. Or maybe that two hour wait in the hot African sun, tsetse flies getting you about every ten minutes, waiting for the lions to copulate again. Or maybe it was mentally earned instead of physically, where many years of grueling away as a graduate student was what earned your ticket to your close encounters with the birds in Costa Rica. Here in the Galapagos, you do not have to earn the actual wildlife encounter. In fact, in some places you have to try and avoid the wildlife. Many iguanas are found with missing and regenerated tails, and Edwin told me many are from careless tourists stepping on them. On the pier, the sea lions are not only lining the walkways, they actually jump up on the benches where humans are to sit and wait for their boat. How are we to keep two meters from them while also standing in the line we have to stand in to get on the boat? And to be fair, the animals here are “naturally” tame. The frigates did not become habituated to the fish market, they were never afraid of the fish market to begin with. Even Darwin wrote about the tameness of the animals here (quote is a little out of order for effect): “A gun is almost superfluous, for with the the muzzle I pushed a hawk off a branch… Finches, wrens, … the dove and carrion-buzzard; all of them (can be) approached sufficiently near to be killed with a switch, and sometimes, as I myself tried, with a cap or hat” :0
The second ingredient that I think is necessary to be defined as a valuable eco-tourism experience has to do with the tourist him/herself. Ideally the person who experienced the elephant or macaw or kangaroo would take that experience with them, and hopefully do something (small or large) that was less about them and more about their local or global biological systems. And then when enough people had these magical moments with nature, there could be a real, productive, global shift into giving a fuck. Without interviewing each one, it is impossible to say how each tourist is affected by their experiences with animals. For those that sit and watch, wait and listen, smile and move gently, I can hazard a good guess that they were positively affected by what they experienced. For others, it is harder to understand what it is they wanted and received out of the interaction. For example, on Tortuga Bay I watched a young woman take off her cover up and, in her mini bikini, lay down on a branch next to a sea lion. She assumed a pose that was on par with the 2016 Sports Illustrated centerfold. As another example, I have seen a very fit and sun kissed young man take a selfie while flexing in front of an iguana. Why was he flexing? Was he going to punch the iguana? Did the iguana do something that made him feel he needed to demonstrate his masculinity? Between the selfies and the poses - it's like their time here is analogous to right after they broke the pinata. They scramble so frantically to collect the sweet moments they don't’ even know what they are collecting. As a steward of ethology and evolution, it is hard to see those tourist experiences as respectable because it is really hard to imagine the ecological experience they are taking with them. As Ernie says, there are iguanas here have more of an internet presence than he does.
Ernie nailed it when it put together some thoughts of Darwin’s with what he has seen in the Galapagos… Back then, as the preface of the Voyage noted, travel for the sake of travel was nonexistent. In fact, Charles writes about how, in the early to mid 1800’s, if a traveler showed up at your door (either in England or anywhere in South America), the host was expected to welcome you, feed you, and make a bed for you. This was because being a traveler required some sophistication; not just anyone could travel from England to Brazil or vice versa. It is true that this level of sophistication was likely almost exclusively achieved in the upper class/wealthy folks, but it still required a level of experience or education. And this experience was respected, because those people were (presumably) doing things to make the world a better place for all people, so hosting travelers was the moral and selfish and altruistic thing to do. Today, there is no sophistication or experience required to travel. One must do nothing to earn travel. One must have cash or a credit card.
(Pause)
We are back in Quito. The bikes are safe and with some good Wifi again, we have a planned route South.
Entonces… maybe all of this is just one long diatribe and/or displaced anger because I’m pissed off that I lost my sweatshirt in the Galapagos. My one and only sweatshirt that packed down so very small I could justify taking it with me as one of eight pieces of clothing. Grr.