The Galapagos Islands

GALAPAGOS

Ahead of us lay the vast Pacific, the world’s biggest ocean, more than double the size of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans put together.

Our first stop was the Galapagos Islands, a World Heritage National Park.  This was an eight day sail from Panama, 1,200nm.  We arrived early in the morning and anchored in Puerto Bahia Baquerizo Moreno at the island of San Cristobal and were told that Customs and Immigration would come to the boat in two hours.  We could see sea lions on the beach.

Ferry dock

Blue footed boobie

 This gave Dimitri the opportunity to dive on the boat and give the hull a quick clean before the officials arrived, together with their diver who inspects the hull.  If the hull is not clean enough, they send you 50nm. offshore to clean it before you may return.  
This happened to a French boat which arrived the day after us.  While Dimitri was diving on the hull, he was joined by two inquisitive little sea lions, which frolicked around him.

We passed inspection and were given a stay of 20 days, albeit at just one island, San Cristobal. One has to get an “autografo” (more money) to be allowed to go to other islands with a private boat.

Customs and Immigration San Cristobal Island

We found the high speed inter-island ferries, which turned out to be powerful speed boats carrying 30 passengers packed like sardines to be a much quicker and easier option.

On our way to the Galapagos we found our gennoa was beginning to come apart.  It was tearing at the leach end and had numerous areas of fray.  We discovered that there are no sailmakers, boatyards or yacht chandlers in the Galapagos and the best we could do was a shoe repair/upholsterer who took on the job of repairing our sail. We had to go to another of the islands, Santa Cruz, the main town, to see him.

High speed ferry to Santa Cruz Island

 We took this as an opportunity to take a tour of this island and stayed for a few days.  Here we visited the Charles Darwin Research Institute. At the institute they conduct special breeding programmes for all the giant tortoises from all the islands and conduct research into the local ecosystem and. the introduced pests e.g. fly larvae which have endangered the survival of the Darwin finches, which are unique to the Galapagos.  We visited a tortoise breeding farm.  

Tortoise breeding farm

There are very few tortoises in the wild, most being in farms where they are microchipped and hand fed. A fun thing we did was go through a 500m. larva tunnel.  Parts of it were very low so we had to crawl through.  We got rather muddy!

Crawling through the larva tunnel

Shrunken head in Santa Cruz museum

 Back at San Cristobal, we did some touring while waiting for our sail to be repaired.  We climbed a high hill, an extinct volcanic caldera in which there is a fresh water lake.  Here frigate birds come to dip their wings into the fresh water,  to clean them and get rid of parasites. 

We delighted in the sea lions at San Cristobal. It was breeding time and there were many suckling pups with their mothers on the beaches.  

Beach shared between sea lions and people

A visitor on the back of our boat

They found the sugar scoop on the back of  our boat a most convenient spot to sleep and needed to be prodded to leave when we wanted to transfer on and off the ferry. The night we arrived back from Santa Cruz, after a three day absence, we found a large male sea lion had taken residence on our back deck. He would not allow us to pass to get to the cockpit and lunged at us, teeth bared. It was only Arti’s terrified shriek that persuaded him that it was time to find another resting spot.  On the brighter side, we went snorkelling in a rocky cove and were joined by baby sea lions who frolicked around us.

The ecosystem of the islands varies with the water available. The higher islands have trees, many introduced species, and bushes. At sea level, it  is dry and full of volcanic rocks, so hard going to walk through, but they have made a host of easy paths for tourists. There are unique cactus ‘trees’ which are very attractive. On land there are only birds and reptiles, including the marine iguanas.

Marine Iguana

 All the animals are not afraid of humans and let you come close. The surrounding seas are fed by the cold Humbolt current and is full of sea life, including the worlds largest concentration of sharks, especially hammerheads. When we went snorkelling, we were surrounded by schools of fish, parting around us and our friendly sealion cubs.

Larva rock on San Cristobal Island

Cactus trees abound

On a sadder note, the Ecuadorians have licensed over 25 fishing vessels, classifying them as ‘artisan fishing’ to get around the world heritage listing. There is no decent refuelling dock and diesel is inevitably spilt as it is transferred by jerrycan, the locals throw a huge amount of plastic in the sea, and there are a host of introduced plants, animals, and insects. The Ecuadorian government is considering private sale of land to foreign developers. At the moment, only Ecuadorians are allowed to stay longer than 3 months.  We were sad to see how settlement of the islands has increased over the years. There are private farms on which land has been cleared and is being farmed with cattle, sheep, goats and horses and the  towns are complete with dogs, cats and rats.  There are now 10,000 people living in Santa Cruz alone and we saw both a village and cattle in the National Park.

Our sail arrived back from Santa Crus and the repairer had done a terrific job. We put it up and set sail for our longest leg of the journey, 3,000nm. to the Marquesas Islands.