Keith's & Karen's Photos: 2018

Red Sally Lightfoot crabs, a blue-footed booby, and a Galápagos sea lion enjoy the warm breeze on a volcanic rock off
Isla Floreana in the Galápagos Islands. Except for the playful baby sea lions, the wildlife seemed oblivious to tourists.
— Click on any of these photos to see them in more detail. —

“The water is so dark, I can't see anything,” I told Keith as I stared down from the deck into an inky void.

Our guide Dennis Ballesteros had told us that after dark we’d be able to see sharks following the boat, attracted to the small fish that were attracted to the lights. But if the light at the stern of the Isabela II helped sharks see the small fish, it wasn’t enough to help me see sharks. Beyond the railing, underneath the stars of the equatorial night sky, I could see nothing but black.

So I turned on my cell phone’s flashlight and gripped it with both hands as I held it out over the water. Only a white rope trailing behind the boat became visible in the water. We stared at the rope for about 30 seconds and tried to figure out how deep it was. The water was so clear, the rope could have been an inch or a yard from the surface.


Keith took this photo the next night, using a brighter light. Consensus among the group was that there must have been at least 50 white-tipped and Galápagos sharks schooling around our boat. Flying fish came to eat the small fish, then take flight to escape the sharks. Flying fish met their own end in a shark feeding frenzy when they would crash into our boat and fall into the water.

But that was enough time to draw silvery movement from all sides. As they swam into the weak pool of light cast by my cell phone, the shapes were unmistakable. Sharks.

Our journey was a textbook example of ecotourism. There must be a dozen ways you can say “Take only photos; leave only footprints,” and Keith and I heard each at least three times from the moment we landed in Quito to join a group of 22 Galápagos-bound tourists.

The 90-foot HMS Beagle that carried Charles Darwin and 72
others around the world from 1831-1836 was smaller than the
110-foot Isabela II. And the Beagle didn't have a bar, a world-
class chef, or housekeeping staff to fold your fresh towels into
plush crabs and leave artisanal Ecuadorian chocolates on your
pillow. The small boat alongside is a 'punta' and how we got off
the boat and onto a new island each morning.

But the sharks told us that’s not possible. As surely as our boat left a wake in the Pacific waters, we humans leave a wake of environmental effects. Our boat needed lights to avoid collision with other boats and any of the two dozen Galápagos islands. And those lights taught the sharks human-influenced feeding habits.

Still, what would this place be without ecotourism? The human species doesn't seem to be able to refrain from entering and dominating any space it finds hospitable, and the Galápagos Islands are nothing if not hospitable. The breathtaking scenery is warmed by equatorial sun and cooled by steady, dry trade winds.

So humans will come to the Galápagos.The question is what the humans do when we get there.

Humans in the Galápagos

One of the two things that make the Galápagos Islands unique is their isolation from land mammals, including humans. The islands are volcanic outcroppings on a large undersea plateau. A 'hotspot' deep within the earth's mantle brings magma to the surface and remains stationary as the Nazca Plate on the earth's crust moves across it. The oldest of the islands--the eastern ones we visited--are as much as 3.5 million years old. The newest ones are still being formed to the west with volcanic eruptions as recently as 2011.

A scale model of the Galápagos Archipelago in the visitor center
of the national park, on the island of San Cristobal, showing both
the above-water islands and the below-water plateau.
If the entire plateau was above water, it would be
roughly the size of New England without Maine.

Having formed out in the ocean, this young land has never been connected to any continent. Life had to get here by hitching a ride on or inside birds, or by floating on the wind or water.

That brings up the second thing that makes the islands unique. Straddling the equator, the islands sit at the convergence of several sets of wind and water currents. Land-based flora and fauna arrived via the Panama Current, which brings warmth down from the coast of Central America and then westward to the islands. Other plants and animals came with the cooler Humboldt Current, which starts in Antarctica and flows northward along the coast of South America then westward to the islands. Welling up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, the cold, nutrient-rich Cromwell Current brings weird and wonderful sea life eastward to the islands.

Unable to float or swim 563 miles from the mainland, pre-Columbian humans seem to have reached the islands only once and did not remain. That allowed other life forms to evolve unmolested. Europeans did not discover the uninhabited islands until 1535, when a Spanish bishop on his way to settle a dispute between conquistadors blew off course.

It didn't take long for the decimation to start. Between when the islands were placed on European navigational charts in 1570 and the dawn of the 20th century, mariners killed an estimated 200,000 giant tortoises. Taken live into the holds of the whalers' and pirates' ships and stored on their backs, the animals would stay put and alive for up to a year until slaughtered, one by one, for fresh meat and the fresh water they stored in their neck bags.

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On the first day, we stopped at the only private preserve we saw the whole time, on the island of Santa Cruz. A family who had kept cattle for several generations decided there was more money in ecotourism. So they created a few freshwater ponds on their land to attract the tortoises, which are allowed to roam free. It worked, because you could walk pretty much anywhere and see a tortoise under every bush in sight—sometimes two or three. They are so unconcerned about human presence that we could have sat on them--we didn't, of course—but it was easy to see how the whalers and pirates were able to catch so many. The guide you hear on this video, Christopher Naranjo, was talking about two other tortoises, behind me as I taped this one, that were mating.

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Pirate and whaling ships used the islands as stopping-off points
to gather fresh meat and water. In the 1770s, someone put a
post-office barrel on Floreana Island, where outbound sailors
would drop off letters for home and inbound sailors would pick
them up and deliver them to the addressees. The tradition is now
carried on by tourists, who leave and pick up postcards. We took
four postcards addressed to people in the Twin Cities area
and will deliver them soon.

Even after Ecuador annexed the islands in 1832, isolation still kept the human population small. In 1835, the HMS Beagle arrived on a mission to map the harbors of South America. The ship’s naturalist, 26-year-old Charles Darwin, made observations for five weeks, but did not make the islands famous until his book, The Origin of Species, was published 27 years later.

Over the next decades, Ecuadorians made use of the islands for a small penal colony and a few plantations. During the early 1900s, Ecuador reached out for potential buyers. Several nations expressed interest, including the United States. But US presence never grew beyond an air base on the arid island of Baltra at the north end of Santa Cruz island, most active when it was used to guard the Panama Canal during WWII.

One weird chapter in Galápagos history was written by a handful of German settlers in the early 1930s, who seem to have ended up mostly killing each other, as far as anyone can tell.

A few islands have ports with small cities. We spent
about an hour in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno
near the airport on the island of San Cristobal,
strolling the 'teeshirt mile' along the shore--
cafes, souvenir shops, that sort of thing.
Sea lions were all over the docks here, too, but for some
reason those photos disappeared from my camera.

Conservation began to take hold in 1955, when the International Union for the Conservation of Nature organized a fact-finding mission to the Galápagos. Ecuador established conservation as the main purpose of human presence in 1959 when it created the Galápagos National Park out of the still-unpopulated 97% of the land. At that time, fewer than 2,000 people called the islands home.

In recent years, efforts have been underway to eliminate feral rats, goats, pigs, dogs, cats, and other destructive invasive species of both plants and animals that humans had introduced over the years. The stories of those efforts are fascinating, but too varied to tell here.

Currently, the human population is around 27,000, who still live on only 3% of the land. Immigration is strictly controlled. The Boston Globe called Ecuador's policy for the Galápagos "one of the strictest migration enforcement efforts in the history of mankind."

The huge cruise ships are not allowed to stop here. Tourists can arrive only by air, and only from the airport in Guayacil, where the security screeners treat seeds and fresh produce like their counterparts at other airports treat explosives and knives. Only park rangers and researchers—not even the natives—are allowed in the national park area unless accompanied by a trained and certified guide. Visitors are not allowed access to anything outside a few beaches and marked walking trails.

Finally, the number of tourists is strictly limited. Last year, the Galápagos hosted 250,000 visitors, which sounds like a lot--until you compare it to another hot spot for ecotourism, Costa Rica, where our guide told me a single trail can get that many hikers in a month.

Politics can change, though, so who knows what the future will bring? I was pleased to learn that the research institutes and tourism companies—at least the one that we dealt with—make special efforts to provide employment for the natives and to get the local kids involved in the enterprise. For example, the luxury yacht that we traveled on is occasionally turned into a temporary floating high school to give local students a tour of the protected national parks areas like the one we paid for. Two of our three guides were native Galápagenos who were first introduced to the research and tourism trades by youth internship at the Charles Darwin Research Station and a high-school trip on a tourist yacht.

When the natural-ness of the environment takes
precedence over human convenience, you get paths
like these. To get to the best views, nesting sites,
and wildlife gathering sites at Punta Suarez
on Espanola Island, we walked 2.8 miles
on these small boulders, from which park rangers
had done nothing more than clear vegetation.

An unexpected benefit of ecotourism, at least for me, was the light weight of our suitcases heading home. When we headed home from India, souvenirs more than filled the empty space I had left in my outbound luggage, and we had to have some shipped home. But as I write this, everything we brought back from the Galápagos is sitting in a small corner on my desk. And a chunk of that is things we're going to give to strangers: the postcards from Post Office Bay that we'll be delivering on our next trip to Minnesota. So sorry we didn't bring you much, kids. There just isn't much for sale.

The wildness of the national park area, too, is uncompromising. Most of the beaches where we disembarked were "wet landings"--that is, with no man-made structure at which a boat could pull up. Visitors must roll up their pants, hop off the boat, and wade to shore. On shore, there are no benches, outhouses, or much of anything else Charles Darwin couldn't have seen, beyond little white stakes to mark the edges of the permitted walking trails and one or two wooden viewing platforms on the high spots. Interpretive signs aren't needed, because tourists are always accompanied by professional guides.

A few words—and 7 pictures—about geology

Kicker Rock, the center of an old volcano off San Cristobal.
The softer cinder cone was worn away by the surf;
all that remains is the harder rock formed by the rising lava.

Our tour focused on wildlife, but the geology kept grabbing my attention. Volcanoes produce so many types of rocks to start with, and then even more as they change over millions of years. Slab-shaped rocks layered from successive eruptions; crumbly rock from compacted ash; smooth ropey rock from flowing magma; rock with incorporated air spaces that make it sound like ceramic when you step on it.

I wasn't alone in my fascination with the rocks. Darwin himself—not knowing at the time that the biology would be his real pay dirt—focused mainly on geology while on the islands in 1835. Among other things, his study of Galápagos rocks enabled him to be the first to understand the formation of tuff, a light, porous rock formed by consolidation of volcanic ash. Our guide also told us that before the Beagle arrived in the Galápagos, Darwin was in an earthquake in South America, when he witnessed the land changing suddenly around him. That experience got him noticing and looking for the role of change over time in natural phenomenon...and making important connections...

A volcanic-boulder beach on San Cristobal Island,
where adult male frigate birds puff up their red throat pouches
to attract the ladies, and Sally Lightfoot crabs decorate
the shore like confetti.

Around Wisconsin, I'd assume these layers of rock were from
sedimentary rock, laid down over ages.
In the Galápagos, they are various eruptions.

Another interesting effect of volcanic layering

The interplay between the surf and cracks in old lava
create this 'geyser' on the southern coast of San Crisobal.
The bigger the wave, the higher the geyser.
We were pretty overheated by the time we got to this height,
and envied the crabs that could enjoy the spray.

Keith photographs a bird in the volcanic landscape.

A huge volcanic something-or-other (okay, I didn't learn to name everything we saw) rises next to the Baronness viewing point at the top of Isla Floreana.

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Fearless wildlife

Wildlife on the Galápagos Islands are known for their unique adaptations to the isolated archipelago--and sometimes even to individual islands. Whole books have been written about the finches' beaks, and iguanas on some islands had different coloring than on other islands.

This ground-cover-munching tortoise on Santa Cruz Island
doesn't need to reach high to eat. His shell is dome-shaped.

The classic example seems to be the Galápagos tortoise, of which there were once more than a dozen varieties. The story goes that a whaler mentioned to Darwin that he could tell which island a tortoise came from by the shape of its shell. The ones with dome-shaped shells lived on some islands; the ones with saddle-shaped shells lived on other islands.

This shubbery-munching tortoise lives on an island
without easy ground cover, so his shell rises at the front.
(Not our photo; we didn't travel to the islands where these live.)

It seems obvious to us now, but they didn't realize then that each tortoise's shell was adapted to the food source on its native island. The tortoises that could eat low ground cover had cozy dome-shaped shells. The tortoises that had to eat from bushes had shells with a higher opening in front, so that they could extend their necks.

The behavior of the Galápagos wildlife alerted me to something they have NOT yet adapted to: human molestation. The first European on the islands, Spanish Bishop Fray Tomas de Berlange, reported that the islands were filled with birds "so silly they do not know to flee."

The baby sea lions were much more interested in the humans
than their parents were. A mama sea lion was lying
nearby as this baby tried to interact with members of our group.
DNA analysis has shown that sea lions share a common
prehistoric ancestor with bears. Our guide pointed out
some bear-paw similarities once when we examined
a sleeping sea lion up close. The guide telling us to be
careful not to step on the fins is Nancy Pazmino.

That hasn't changed. That's good and bad. Bad, of course, because if Ecuador ever lets down its guard, this wildlife could easily be exploited again as they once were. Good, because the birds', animals', and amphibians' comfort with our often noisy presence was clear evidence that the national park's visitor-control measures are effective.

The sharks tailing our boat every night were the only wildlife—aside from the curious baby sea lions—that exhibited behavior I could tell was altered by human presence. As if in Eden, all the others treated us as if we were no more threatening or consequential than common houseflies.

Iguanas didn't stop digging their nests among small boulders that made a path for dozens of humans every day—even as we stepped right over them. The bluefooted boobies confidently built their nests within the footfall area of the tourist path and didn’t interrupt their nesting behavior even when a human lay on his stomach and started a camera clicking away three feet from the eggs. Sea lions slumbered, stretched,

I cannot take credit for this adorable photo.
One of our guides snapped it.

nursed their young, and played without seeming to notice the humans strolling by on the coralline* beaches.
* Corraline is a new word I learned. Some beaches are made of soft, finely ground coral spit out by the clown fish who feed on them, such as the one in the video below. Other beaches are made of ground-up volcanic rock. Some of the volcanic-sand beaches sparkled green with finely ground peridot, a semi-precious gem.

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You would think that fearless wildlife would always make for easy, good photos, but it has its own challenges. Wildlife, like this nursing mother sea lion, allowed humans to get so close that it was sometimes difficult to keep each others' shadows, feet, and cameras out of the frame. The guide you hear on this video is Christopher Naranjo.

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The odd thing about this photo is not that the blue-footed booby built a nest so close to where the humans walk, and it's not that the booby isn't flying away or attacking the photographer. It's that the booby even seems to be acknowledging his presence. The boobies weren't careless; you could see them reacting when a predator bird came into view. They just don't fear humans.

The same booby was more nonchalant when I took his/her picture.
Both male and female boobies tend the eggs.
I cannot remember how to tell the difference.

We must have seen more than a dozen nests during our hike up to Punta Pitt, on San Cristobal island.
This baby bluefooted booby was starting to use its flying muscles as the parent booby ignored the humans and
looked out for predator birds. It won't fly for a long while yet; we saw some young boobies
that were nearly the size of the parents, with brown feathers, who couldn't yet fly.

These two were doing a mating dance by the path as we walked by.
Notice the human and booby footprints mixed together in the sand.

Again, notice how close the nest is to the path.

A red-footed booby feeding her chick in a nest built in a bush close by the path.
Sorry I didn't get the photo of the feet. The red-footed boobies didn't seem as eager to show them off.

This iguana took note of Keith, but was not afraid.

Abundant wildlife

The second most notable thing—after their fearlessness—was the sheer number of living things. Within a minute after we got off the bus from the airport on Baltra, a particularly desert-like island,

We didn't notice the iguana sitting facing away from the camera
on the rock between Keith and the cactus until after I'd snapped
the photo. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Keith wanted me to take his photo next to one of the cactus plants that populated the landscape. He posed by the cactus, and I snapped his photo. Only when I put the camera down did he notice he was sharing the frame with a yellow-bellied land iguana.

That was our first taste of Galápagos wildlife photography. It's not hard to find wildlife to photograph. It would be hard to keep them out of the frame, if for some reason you wanted to.

Keith snapped a close-up after we noticed him there.

One of the guidebooks that I skimmed before we left said that the red Sally Lightfoot crabs were on every rock. That turned out to be only a little exaggeration. Their shiny red shells gave a festive note to nearly every shoreline. Look for them, and I'll bet you can see at least one in every shoreline photo in this blog post.

We were instructed not to approach the wildlife any closer than two or three feet, except adult male sea lions, to whom we were to give wider berth. But this little guy staked out a sunning spot on the only man-made walkway on any of the beaches we visited, and we would have been stuck on the landing all day if Dennis hadn't gently shooed him of to the side.

How many living creatures can you spot in this photo—air, land, and water?

How many marine iguanas in this picture, near the top of Punta Suarez on Espanola Island?

The experience

Our itinerary. We spent a day or two on each island (except Baltra--that was just the airport) and traveled at night.
Actually, our inbound flight came from Guayacil, where we had transferred off a flight from Quito.
To enable security screening for invasive plants and insects, visitors must pass through special screening
that is performed only at the Guayacil airport.

We chatted with the native Galapageno owner of a restaurant where we ate lunch.
I asked if those were philodendron hanging down from the trees.
He replied, "And going up, too."