Wildlife and people must coexist in the Galapagos - for better or worse: pelicans gather for a feed of fish leftovers at the Puerto Ayora waterfront fish market.
There are very few places in the last 8 years of slowly circumnavigating the planet that we have visited before, but the Galapagos Islands are one of those places. As eager young backpackers we flew to the islands to seek out a unique and less visited part of our planet in 1982. We have not yet been anywhere that has never been visited and are unlikely to do so how ever hard we try. We were lucky to have the foresight to visit these islands before the surge of global tourism began. Even though conservation is high on the agenda, towns like Puerto Ayora have mushroomed into tourist meccas with the sandy roads long given way to tarmac.
We are today part of that growing trend of people seeking parts of our planet that have not been completely dominated by man like these islands. Fortunately, the Ecuadorian government sees their value and restricts movement and limits tourist operators and fishing licences so at least people can see what goes on in nature and has done without humans for one or 2 million years. A giant land tortoise on Santa Cruz can hold its head high at having a survival rate that exceeds 150 years. Even though the species was badly affected by the introduction of egg eating rodents and vegetation destroying goats and pigs, their survival is more or less guaranteed by conservation efforts.
An Israeli backpacker - a big, strapping lad - admires a big, strapping tortoise, probably five times his age. Not sure what the tortoise thinks.
Garbage management is better here than many other places. On pristine white beaches there is no sign of plastic, odd pairs of thongs, fishing nets or polystyrene scraps that we have seen on too many other beaches we have visited around the world.
Tortuga beach - a lovely white sand beach on the South Coast of Santa Cruz with not a shred of rubbish just for once!
Our re-exploration of Santa Cruz has awakened half buried memories, mostly pretty hazy! We clearly remember the surreal sight of giant tortoises in the dairy cow paddocks near the boundary of the national park - green grass, black and white cows and huge tortoises! We went back to Finca Primicia and saw around 20 to 30 of the giants. Most of them were males as the females had migrated further down the slopes towards the coast to breed. Apparently, the people at the tortoise breeding centre in Puerto Ayora try to find the eggs if they can (the nests are often well hidden in scrub and cactus and only a few eggs are laid at one time). They keep the eggs in incubators until the hatchlings emerge and then until the little tortoises have reached 4 to 5 years old. There are about 1,000 galapagos left on Santa Cruz, scattered all over the island, but because of hatchling success, there are many more of them in the west.
The older tortoises seemed to be a little more afraid of human presence and some of them retreated into their shells when we got close - with a hiss as the air escaped from their shells. Those that were probably reared by humans when they were younger were totally unphased by people nearby. The tortoise tracks leading away into the thick undergrowth at the edge of the finca looked like the rhino tracks we had seen a couple of years ago in the Terai of Nepal!
We also remembered the iconic shape of Bartolome Island with its tuff pinnacle, half moon shaped beaches and the great sheet of black basalt lava that had poured down nearby James (Santiago) island. We shelled out for a tour from the Baltra passage up around Bartolome and James. No penguins this time, but we did see the extraordinary sight of a marine iguana underwater, repeatedly returning to the bottom to graze, undeterred by violent disapproval from territorial yellow tailed damsel fish whose gardens they were gobbling! When we were on James on the 1982 visit there were a lot of donkeys, goats and pigs that were wreaking havoc on the land iguana and tortoise population, but they have been since successfully eradicated.
Like so many other oceanic islands that have evolved unique and interesting fauna and flora, even if the human presence was suddenly subtracted, the presence of much more successful plants and animals introduced by people make it hard for the natives to survive. Wildlife and people now live in a symbiotic relationship in the Galapagos. Without the wildlife draw, the Galapagos economy would collapse, but without the attention of Ecuadorian park staff and well wishers from around the world, the original natural inhabitants would find it difficult to survive.
Parts of Santa Cruz we never remembered - probably because we never went there! Particularly impressive were the lava tunnels - much larger than the ones we have seen on Rangitoto in the Hauraki Gulf, beautiful volcanic sink holes, the sweeping white sand beach at Tortuga Bay and the weird fissure near Puerto Ayora known as Las Grietas. The latter, easily accessed by a pathway from the Angermeyer restaurant wharf was more like a sandstone gorge in Australia's Northern Territory or Kimberley. The fissure is a deep chasm filled with mixed sea water and freshwater - full of large mullet and parrot fish - but how did they get in and how can they get out? It was a mystery.
We now have a few days to sort out boring things like diesel, gas and water before we head to the last and largest island - Isabela. Meanwhile, out in the watery wilderness between here and Polynesia, the first yacht sinking of the season has already occurred. The American yacht "Nirvana Now" sunk half way between Isabela and the Marquesas, the crew of 3 thankfully rescued by a yacht that had been in San Cristobal at the same time as us. All credit to them and the ham radio operators who helped coordinate the rendezvous.
Isla Bartolome, just off volcanic Santiago (James) Island
Marine iguana grazes underwater while a yellow tailed damselfish looks on in disgust at the encroachment on his turf
Las Grietas - a water filled crack in the volcanic rock
Brown pelican sharing a precarious perch on Saraoni's pulpit