The following day I took a speedboat over to another island, Isabela. This is the largest island in the Galápagos and yet it’s much less developed than Santa Cruz and has a really nice, laid-back, beach vibe. There were beautiful sunsets here, and one of the hostels had a bonfire in the evenings, right on the beach, so I spent a couple of nights there having a few beers with some other travellers. A really, really nice spot to hang out!
On my first day in Isabela, I took a day tour to see two of the island’s active volcanoes: Sierra Negra and Volcán Chico. It was a 16km round-trip hike, and it was HOT and yes I managed to get very sunburned again (will I ever learn?). No panda face this time though. It was an interesting hike: we started out on the damp, misty Southern side of the highlands, and the trail took us through mangroves and other trees to the edge of the Sierra Negra volcano - apparently the second largest crater in the world. It last erupted in 2005 and our guide showed us photos he’d taken, as many of the locals gathered along the path to watch the eruption!
Moving on from there we found ourselves walking up and down across the blackened lava of the Volcán Chico. There were two eruptions here in the last 50 years and you could see whether you were walking on lava from the first or second eruption according to its colour (red-brown from the older eruption and black from the more recent one!).
Our guide explained to us how the Galápagos Islands were formed, and I found it really interesting so will try to recount it here (feel free to skip ahead if you're smarter than me and already know this stuff)!
The islands are 3-5 million years old. They are situated on the edge of one of the Earth’s tectonic plates (the Nazca plate), above a “hot spot”, which is a plume of magma which pushes up through the crust. As the tectonic plate drifts, the magma rises through the crust at different locations and as it reaches the surface it cools, and forms islands. Following successive volcanic eruptions over millions of years, the islands rise up, but then wind and water erosion smooths out the peaks and they become lower again (over more millions of years). Eventually all of the current Galápagos islands will disappear beneath the surface of the ocean (some much older islands are already down there!) but new islands will also emerge as the Nazca plate continues to drift. Kind of cool, no?
Since the islands were never part of the mainland, and are quite far from any other countries, very few species could have originally made it there. Few species of bird would fly that far and small land creatures like iguanas would have had to arrive on floating vegetation (which is why there are very few mammals on the islands). However, the distinctness of the species which now exist on the different islands suggests that there must have been evolution after the arrival of the original species (since the islands are all different ages and have unique living conditions). And that’s where Darwin came into it. He used the 14 different species of Finch found in the Galápagos to illustrate his theory of evolution.
OK, lesson over!
When we got back to the main town, Puerto Villamil, I went for a quick snorkel with Johannes, a Dutch guy I’d met the night before. We’d heard that there was a spot near the port where you could snorkel with sealions but when we got there we discovered that the sealions much preferred to snooze in the sun, rather than swim with us! No amount of coaxing would encourage them into the water!
The next morning I took a walk to a Rearing Centre for Giant Tortoises. There were lots of marine iguanas and lava lizards on the trail, which also passed by some mangrove swamps full of flamingoes.
In the afternoon I took a half-day tour to Las Tintoreras, which is a small island just across the harbour from Puerto Villamil. Penguins were swimming alongside our boat on the trip over. (Cool fact: the Galápagos is the only place you’ll find wild penguins North of the Equator).
The tour started with some snorkelling and here I saw Green Sea Turtles! They were huge, and most of them were just lying still on the ocean floor, but then one swam up to the surface for air and bobbed his head up right alongside me! It was amazing to watch him swim so gracefully back down to the bottom.
We then went ashore for a short walk, and saw loads more wildlife including marine iguanas (I’d given up taking photos of them by this point), sea-lions, and the highlight: a shallow channel full of White-tipped Reef Sharks. On the boat trip back we saw blue-footed boobies and penguins sitting on the rocks and Manta Rays in the water beneath us.
On my first day in Isabela, I took a day tour to see two of the island’s active volcanoes: Sierra Negra and Volcán Chico. It was a 16km round-trip hike, and it was HOT and yes I managed to get very sunburned again (will I ever learn?). No panda face this time though. It was an interesting hike: we started out on the damp, misty Southern side of the highlands, and the trail took us through mangroves and other trees to the edge of the Sierra Negra volcano - apparently the second largest crater in the world. It last erupted in 2005 and our guide showed us photos he’d taken, as many of the locals gathered along the path to watch the eruption!
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| La Sierra Negra Crater |
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| Volcán Chico |
The islands are 3-5 million years old. They are situated on the edge of one of the Earth’s tectonic plates (the Nazca plate), above a “hot spot”, which is a plume of magma which pushes up through the crust. As the tectonic plate drifts, the magma rises through the crust at different locations and as it reaches the surface it cools, and forms islands. Following successive volcanic eruptions over millions of years, the islands rise up, but then wind and water erosion smooths out the peaks and they become lower again (over more millions of years). Eventually all of the current Galápagos islands will disappear beneath the surface of the ocean (some much older islands are already down there!) but new islands will also emerge as the Nazca plate continues to drift. Kind of cool, no?
Since the islands were never part of the mainland, and are quite far from any other countries, very few species could have originally made it there. Few species of bird would fly that far and small land creatures like iguanas would have had to arrive on floating vegetation (which is why there are very few mammals on the islands). However, the distinctness of the species which now exist on the different islands suggests that there must have been evolution after the arrival of the original species (since the islands are all different ages and have unique living conditions). And that’s where Darwin came into it. He used the 14 different species of Finch found in the Galápagos to illustrate his theory of evolution.
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| Darwin Finch |
When we got back to the main town, Puerto Villamil, I went for a quick snorkel with Johannes, a Dutch guy I’d met the night before. We’d heard that there was a spot near the port where you could snorkel with sealions but when we got there we discovered that the sealions much preferred to snooze in the sun, rather than swim with us! No amount of coaxing would encourage them into the water!
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| Totally bored by the thought of swimming with us! |
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| Scenery along the trail |
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| Galápagos Penguin |
We then went ashore for a short walk, and saw loads more wildlife including marine iguanas (I’d given up taking photos of them by this point), sea-lions, and the highlight: a shallow channel full of White-tipped Reef Sharks. On the boat trip back we saw blue-footed boobies and penguins sitting on the rocks and Manta Rays in the water beneath us.
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| White-Tipped Reef Sharks |
Wonderful pics but slight correction. Actually it was the Mockingbirds that he studied and not the finches. Finches were then named after him later. There's a good story where he has a revelation about the different tortoises only to discover that the crew have eaten the specimens they had on board!
ReplyDeleteDamn it - you're such a stickler for accuracy.
DeleteLove the sound of the tortoise story!