THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT
From monster lizards to ‘dinosaur’ birds, the Galapagos offer a wildlife adventure that’s out of this world,
GAZING at a frigate bird as it perches on a ship’s rail just six feet from your head, it’s impossible not to think of pterodactyls – and you start to get the strange feeling that you’ve strayed into The Land That Time Forgot.
With its fierce, hooked beak, vast angled wingspan and beady eye, the bird exudes primitive scorn. And as our ship meanders its way around the Galapagos Islands, you notice that wildlife even rules in the sparse human settlements: sprawled on one town bench, hogging the shade, a sea lion waves a lazy flipper of ownership. And take a hike on the ragged black lava and you’ll probably have to step around a 3ft iguana dozing on the path.
The Galapagos, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, are a Pacific outpost born of immense volcanic eruptions. Sailors, privateers and eccentrics have settled here sporadically over the past 400 years, sharing these islands with 4,000 species of wildlife – nearly half of them unique to this place, and all unafraid of Man.
There are snakes that go fishing, and immense tortoises whose shells have evolved and now have a rakish uplift to allow high grazing. Where but on lonely Floreana, one of the islands that makes up the archipelago, can you nose past mangroves and skeletal-white incense trees in a rigid inflatable to see flamingoes – seemingly so African – amiably sharing a rock-pool with neat little penguins?
And what other ecosystem would produce huge iguanas that can stay underwater for an hour feeding on algae and then sneeze the salt out through their noses? And they produce urine so clear of salt that small birds gratefully drink it during droughts.
The islands blow your mind, not least because the wildlife is so famously fearless: virtually all the land here has been designated a national park and, according to the rules, you should not get closer than 8ft to the wildlife, but those rules are insouciantly ignored by the animals and birds. During my stay, blue-footed boobies did their mating dance next to a track, a rare mockingbird pecked our shoelaces, and a curious sea lion pup galloped up to inspect us on the beach.
To visit this World Heritage Site was the fulfilment of a lifetime dream – and just reaching the islands is no mean feat. It’s a 24-hour journey on three planes from Britain.
We first flew to the Ecuadorian mountain city of Quito: given more time, we would gladly have spent several days there under the Cotopaxi volcano, roaming Spanishcolonial squares and taking day trips up the Andes or down into the Amazon.
But after one elegant night in the historic Patio Andaluz hotel, we flew to the island of San Cristobal to board our new home – the Origin, the newest and smartest of the Ecoventura fleet. It is an informal, very comfortable super-yacht for 20 guests staying in smart cabins.
Fine meals are served at marble- topped tables, and the packed itinerary around the islands is led by highly qualified naturalists.
It has to be that way: you don’t go to the Galapagos to lounge all day on beaches (no food or drink apart from water may be taken ashore, and there are no ‘rest rooms’ or visitor facilities on most islands). You don’t go ashore in flip-flops either, because many of the living treasures can be found along rough, rocky trails. You go with stout shoes and respect, to marvel as Charles Darwin did.
Every hour produces excitements and fresh gasps, from seeing that the blue-footed booby does indeed have feet so electric-blue that they are almost neon, to swimming with penguins and turtles while frigate birds soar overhead.
Even glancing over the rails of the Origin produces a few surprises: on the final night, three enormous sharks circled the stern, just inches below the clear surface. On another occasion, a sea lion clambered aboard for a nap.
On the tiny island of Espanola, we saw a single albatross and gathered for a ‘unique’ moment. But ten minutes later, the plateau was covered with them: one pair guarding their egg, and two more twining necks in a mating-dance. Albatrosses roll their eggs before they hatch: if they roll in a circle, it’s a female, and if it goes in a straight line, it’s a male. Nobody knows why. Our guides, Cecibel and Billy, said they have to go on regular refresher courses because scientists keep finding new facts.
THE brain spins in the heat, but even the clumsiest smartphonesnapper can get the most incredible photographs. It’s like Eden. As the young Darwin wrote: ‘Both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact – that mystery of mysteries – the first appearance of new beings on this Earth.’
Indeed, on our first trek ashore – a steep, rocky scramble at Punta Pitt on San Cristobal – the most moving thing we saw was not lounging sea lions but our first Darwin’s finches. It was the diversity of beak and claw shapes on different islands that first led
Darwin to propose his theory of natural selection. Out of sheer need and innate determination, the birds remodelled their feeding habits and beaks. It was the first hard evidence of evolution.
Survival for some means death for others. On Espanola, Billy showed us the sea lion nursery in the shallows, where the young stay safe from sharks while mothers hunt at sea. As he said that, a very thin, lone pup flopped towards us, its ribs showing under the glossy coat. It actually nosed my black shoe hopefully. ‘The mother will have been shark food,’ said Billy. ‘The pup will die.’
We were lucky that our slots to visit the national park were early in the morning when it was a little cooler. We would wake at 6am, have breakfast on the Origin, and by 7.30am we were powering ashore in a rigid inflatable. After exploring the various rocky trails, we would take a coffee break before going snorkelling or swimming amid big, brown-striped fish.
After lunch and a snooze, we were free to roam along a vast whitesand beach, or snorkel or swim as pelicans dived into the sea just feet away from us.
There are few things more disconcerting than suddenly seeing through your snorkel mask that one of the rocks is moving – then realising it is, in fact, a turtle the size of a car bonnet.
It was also rather a shock four days into the trip to see the busy jetty at Santa Cruz, complete with shops, trees, imported plants and flowers.
On one of our jaunts, we took a trip into the highlands to walk woodland paths full of giant tortoises, which Darwin himself called ‘antediluvian’ – dinosaurs in shells. They looked at us casually, then returned to their pursuits. One vast male managed to chase a reluctant female until she escaped into a shallow pond.
The ship melded our disparate group together, to the point that the final farewells were celebratory embraces. There were more Americans than Britons on board (cheap flights abound from the US to Quito) and some brought expertise: in this volcano country, we were fortunate to have a geomorphologist among us, to whom the guides gladly deferred as he explained the deep lava tunnel we crept through and the sharp flakes underfoot.
On a beach on Espanola, a bleached whale skeleton was laid out amid the sea lions, so a learned debate flared between a US army doctor and a retired vet about whether the vertebrae were lined up correctly. Amiable companions from 23 to 80, we were all pleasingly grown-up: there was not a single selfie-stick to be found.
The walking was varied, never technically difficult but sometimes exhausting. The jagged lava rocks and boulders meant that some of the group liked using sticks.
The oddest conditions were on the islet Sombrero Chino, a chaotic mingling of rough lava, lumps of white coral and sea-salt crystals: God’s equivalent of a builder’s rubble. But what a builder! Off its pristine white beach tiny penguins swam and darted.
Magical.