Peregrination: Las Islas Galápagos y Parque Historico de Guyaquil

Captain's Log for May 3-6: AND FINALLY, with two weeks left in Ecuador, and the arrival of the next Aviary intern, Kristen Tobin, quickly approaching...I fled to the Galapagos. Eight plus years after my ninth-grade biology teacher gave me the Voyage of the Beagle, I made it to Darwin's islands, found Darwin's finches, and extensively questioned all the guides and scientists I ran into. I knew the Galapagos had world-famous ecological wonders, but man, I was still knocked flat at every turn. Swimming with the golden rays and marine iguanas, rapt with attention as the guides rattled off the subtleties of Darwin finch identification tricks, gleeful with my first encounters with albatrosses, flamingoes, and penguins in the wild...it was a biologist dream-cation. On my way back from the islands, I passed through Guyaquil and visited the historical area, where they have an awesome wildlife park...

Galapagos animals, conservation, and adventure. GO.

You can fly out to the islands on two national airlines in Ecuador. They're about five hundred kilometers offshore.

Picture.

Me being me, I was ECSTATIC over the chance to see Darwin's finches. Talk about celebrity status: these little guys helped bring about the theory of evolution.

I was also in love with the Lava Lizards. There were a few species on the islands: the females were more brightly colored than the males.

Lonesome George: they've made him into a clothing company. meep.

I stayed in a hostel on Santa Cruz, in Port Ayora. This is the most heavily visited area in all the Galapagos: super touristy, with nightclubs and restaurants galore. There are ferries and boats that leave for the other islands from this port every single day, and often there are cruise ships docked in the harbor.

Yellow warbler.

Large-billed flycatcher.

The lava and the mangroves: sea lion napping sites.

The MARINE IGUANAS. They're awesome, and they're everywhere. They forage on the marine alga: males tend to be the only ones that dive to forage, while the females wait for low tide.

"I think we're being watched..."

Sally lightfoot crabs. Such color.

Awesome brine-water fissure on Santa Cruz: the terrain varied incredibly from dry forest in the island highlands to volcanic craters and tunnels on Floreana and Isabela; mangrove forests and rocky outcrops for bird nesting, brine or freshwater filling canyons like this one, and a number of small ponds and lakes inland.

Male lava lizard!

Check this out: a bunch of marine iguanas come ashore at this site on Santa Cruz every afternoon.

They 'sneeze' to expel the saltwater they consume while foraging, and are often salt-stained. So many! Lounging all over the beaches.

Nice camouflage, guys.

Lava heron....or just a morph of the striated heron? YOU decide.

Inland marshes and pools.

Galapagos mockingbird on Isla Santa Cruz.

Great Frigatebird! Much like the Magnificent Frigatebird. Frigatebirds rock.

Isla Floreana.

There are twelve Galapagos-native finches and three others spread across the islands. They are relatively drab, but differ drastically in beak shape and size---and sometimes foraging strategy, as is the case with the 'Vampire' or sharp-beaked ground finch, which feeds off of the external parasites and blood of other Galapagos shorebirds. Their variations are what got Darwin musing about evolution.

The highlands of Floreana. The islands are quite large!

Similar to the endemic finches, there were originally eleven species of galapagos giant tortoises: one for each of the volcanoes around the island. With the death of Lonesome George, there are only ten species remaining, and many of them are critically endangered due to hunting and trafficking.

The way that they are trying to help these threatened populations is through breeding programs on Santa Cruz, Floreana, and Isabela. The turtles are closely kept and placed in breeding corrals on these islands, where they are reproducing at much faster rates. Members of the Environmental Ministry of Ecuador and these breeding centers hope one day to have the populations stable enough to re-release the turtles into their natural habitats at the base of the volcanoes where they evolved.

The experiences with these breeding centers really got me thinking hard about how desperate our measures need to be to save these creatures now, and how tourism, though detrimental to these areas, is necessary if we want to prevent their utter destruction.

For now, the support of visitors is enabling these breeding and conservation programs to move forward with superhuman efforts to save these incredibly iconic species...and tourism is crucial to the future of the Galapagos.

Marine Iguana lounging on Playa Negra, Floreana.

I love this: they call sea urchins 'sea hedgehogs' in Spanish. Erizos del mar. This is a sea urchin skeleton.

Marine snails.

Sleepy sea lions everywhere.

I wish I knew more and could tell you about all the amazing fishlife I came in contact with while snorkelling. The underwater sounds of sea turtles chomping down on plants and alga, their beaks clicking, was particularly delightful.

Isla Floreana.

If you can focus on the rocks beyond the boat, there are Galapagos penguins, which are endemic. My first penguins in the wild.

Hey there, cuties. There aren't many of them on Floreana; we got lucky.

The Winged albatrosses, storm petrels, and other pelagic seabirds were incredible when seen taking off above the waves between islands. It took us an hour and a half to two and a half hours to reach Isabela and Floreana; I didn't visit San Cristobal, rumored to be the most beautiful, or Espanola, where the Albatrosses court and breed this time of year.

Lava gull.

Outdoor foodstands, or Kioskos, on Santa Cruz.

They sold slipper lobsters for ten bucks apiece. I'd never seen these guys before; so weird without claws!

Winged Albatross nesting....in a picture on a calendar in my hostel, because you can only reach Espanola via cruise ship. SIGH.

Isla Isabela had some increeeeeedible snorkelling. Saw a set of twenty-some sea turtles resting on the ocean floor at one point; felt like the marine iguanas meandering around near me swam like crocodiles.

Blue footed boobies!

Great Blue Heron.

Crazy lichens on island lava fields; TONS of lava lizards.

More Galapagos Penguins! They swam RIGHT UP to us...

Brown Pelicans. Always awesome.

More lava lizards...so pretty...

Pencil urchin.

Iguanas nested on the outer edges of Isabela: a lot of the habitat was off-limit to visitors.

A wild and sad story: the Mangrove Finch is now much like many of the turtles; being sequestered on other islands to save the species. The decline of Mangrove Finches, native to Isabela, is due to a parasite that eats mucosal membranes, rendering the finches unable to eat. There is a ton of research and work being done on this phenomenon at the moment...conservation medicine. This is what it's all about.

Watching for reef sharks in a fissure on the edge of the island. They like to come into protected areas to eat developing fish.

Some crablife.

HERE'S A FISH PICTURE. Because my camera can't go underwater with me.

There was a small man-made lake on Isabela where a handful of Greater Flamingoes were feeding.

Amazing: these guys must have flown their way to the islands at some point in the past. Greater Flamingoes.

There were also some White-cheeked Pintails here!

More turtle breeding centers.

Banded birds! They're monitoring the Isabela Mockingbirds.

Volcanoes supporting different giant tortoise populations.

Logo gets to the point, I suppose.

Always birdwatching...

On Santa Cruz, they had an admittedly fascinating, and questionably ecologically sound practice: they turn on the docklights at night, which attract swarms of fish...and thus rays, sharks, and sea lions.

Even some pelicans were poaching late-night snacks.

Cute little reef sharks.

Port Ayora lit up at night.

And sea lions.

Yellow Warblers.

On my last day, I took a walk through some dry forest with a guy who definitely knew his finches. The field stations on Santa cruz were asking for people to contribute any underwater photos of sharks they had in order to bolster datasets for behavioral research. Yay citizen science!

The Islands. Santa Cruz is the largest one.

Really cool cacti and very different plants: sadly, it was pouring rain in the dry forest, and I didn't get many pictures.

Male vegeterian finch!

Traps for invasive wasp species along the path. Nice.

Protected turtle nesting areas.

Finches eating skin and external parasites off marine iguanas!

Mmmm....iguana skin.

Hermit crabs.

SUPER POISONOUS Manzanillo trees.

...the giant tortoises can eat the fruits, though.

The home of the late Lonesome George: the turtle breeding center in Darwin Station on Santa Cruz.

Apparently, giant tortoise females can store sperm up to three years to optimize the time they lay their eggs. Because of this, the two females of similar species they tried to hybridize with George before his death are still isolated at the breeding center.

Success is baby tortoises. They have many.

Funny side-story: I met a bunch of sperm whale biologists working with Dr.Hal Whitehead, from Del Housie University in Nova Scotia. I got to go see him speak, and hang out with them for a night. Yay biology!

Dr.Whitehead himself.

Annnnnnnnnd they collect whale stool samples to analyze diet. Field biology is the craziest.

Me with the whale field crew!

On my last morning, I visited 'Los Gemelos'--two MASSIVE volcanic craters. It was incredible how much of the Galapagos I didn't get to see in my four short days there...I would definitely return.

Until next time, Galapagos...

Visited the Historical Park in downtown Guyaquil. They have a similar setup to Amaru: a natural zoo-type display and educative materials about the rescued animals they care for.

I have to say, the historical park was by far the most natural and most beautiful wildlife park I've ever been to.

It was also, coincidentally, the first and only place I've seen Harpy Eagles in real life.

They have a magnificent, three-story tower near the expansive aviary they have for their NESTING PAIR. I stayed up here for the better part of an hour.