Thursday, August 27, 2009

On Some Faraway Beach


The path to Tortuga Bay. Tortuga means turtle and Galapagos also means turtle. There are many marine iguanas to be sure, but I´ve never actually seen any turtles at Tortuga Bay.


Michael sits upon a ten dollar boogie board rental. A large wooden sign at the entrance to the beach warns "Danger. Turbulent Waters. No Life Guard." To which we politely reply, Posh! We almost always have the entire beach to ourselves.


Sand-dipped toe tips.


Catch a wave and your sitting on top of the world.





Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The Sundry Sights


Mangroves at low tide at Finch Bay.


Sun-bathing marine iguanas.


Galapagos Fragata, one of the few we´ve seen on the ground.


Hermit crab (sorry to disturb you).

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

More Flora, More Fauna

A big yellow cactus flower, apparently the bloom coincides with the full moon. I don´t know what kind of cactus this is (a Google image search for ¨big yellow cactus flower¨ yielded no positive ids).

These are called Sally Lightfoot crabs, as they are nimble and fleet.


Looking down on some slumbering sharks in a sleepy green lagoon.


A pineapple and its pups.


The ever-popular giant tortoise, looking a bit shy. A tortoise in this tucked-in position, when properly situated against some kind of vertical surface (such as the riser of a stairwell) can yeild up to a hundred extra lives when jumped upon succesively.

Under the Sea















A yawning sea lion. A blue heron. The view from our apartment towards Academy Bay. A family of prickly pear cacti.
We went snorkeling with sea lions a few days ago. Avoiding the treacherous rocks which our guide warned us would "cut you like a Gillette" we dove from our tour boat into the open seas. The sea lions at first kept on land, but the soon became curious and dove in for a closer look. There were two of them that took an interest in Kim and me. It was amazing seeing them underwater and be in direct contact with them. You could tell they were just as curious as we were, checking us out as we were checking them. Having given up our apartments in Brooklyn, we are seriously considering a permanent move under the sea.
Meanwhile, back on land, there are sights aplenty. We attended our first dinner party the other night, complete with a midnight moonlit ride back into town in the back of a pick up truck. We found Finch Bay yesterday and did some snorkeling there. There were little black and purple fish with yellow circles around their eyes that would swim towards your finger if you pointed at them. We saw a school of literaly hundreds of silver fish. I have no idea what kind, but they just kept coming and swiming around us. It is amazing how even the smallest fish is aware of your presence and, all projections aside, seems none the less just as curious in you as you are in it.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Greetings from Narnia

Giant tortoise. Do not ride the giant tortoises.


You can see a sea lion if you look closely.

Pelican. The black rock it is sitting on is typical here - black, porous, volcanic rock.

Not sure what kind of lizard, but there are lots of them. They were licking out their breakfast from the pores in the rocks along the bay. There were many crabs too, but they were more camera shy.


We have been on the Island of Santa Cruz for a week now. We were initially off to a slow start, due to some food-borne bacterial infection that afflicted Kim. For the first few days, Kim was in bed dealing with a fever, headache, aching joints and intestinal unpleasantries. A visit to the island´s doctor and a prescription of Cipro did the trick. We´re back and better than ever and we´ve now been to the beach at Tortuga bay for a swim and yesterday we went snorkelling at the Charles Darwin research station (I saw a sea turtle). Tomorrow we sheduled a boat tour of the bay, snorkelling included.


We start our mornings with a cafe con leche at a restaurant on the bay. Internet costs more here than on the mainland, $2 per hour as opposed to $1. The ice cream bars are also more expensive here. The animals really are very tame and we´ve already seen iguannas, giant tortoises, sea lions, pelicans, crabs, and lizards aplenty.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Santa Cruz, Galapagos Islands

We arrived on Santa Cruz in the Glapagos three or four days ago. We first flew from Guayaquil to Baltra Island, and took a short ferry ride from Baltra to Santa Cruz. We almost did not make it to the islands at all. We arrived at the Guayaquil airport from Peurto Lopez and found out that all flights to the Galapagos were booked solid until mid-September. A friendly guy working behind the Tame Airlines ticket counter suggested that there might be a chance to get onboard if we arrived early in the morning and stood in the "waiting list" line. With few other options, we resolved to sleep in the airport overnight in order to secure a first position in line.

Thankfully, we did not have to do that. After spending a few hours in the airport (China Wok for dinner), I asked another woman behind the Tame ticket counter if the airport were indeed open all night and if she thought it would be a good idea to sleep in line. She didn´t like the sound of that and said hold on a second... I may be able to help you. In a few minutes, we had two round trip tickets to the Galapagos in hand for the following day´s 11 am flight.

Since we didn´t have to sleep on the floor of an airport, we splurged on a room at the Sheraton (again after being told that there were no rooms and nothing could be done) and enjoyed hot showers, shampoo, two giant beds, air conditioning and Transformers on a wide screen flat panal tv. No mosquitoes!

Crossing from Baltra to Santa Cruz, we were greeted by crystal blue waters and a sea lion sunning on a red buoy.



It was a forty-five minute drive across the island to Puerto Ayora. Our gracious hosts Jill and Javier have really made us feel at home. We inherited their in-town apartment and they moved into a beautiful house in a more secluded area on the island.