Eliza’s Galapagos Journal

April 21 – 30, 2004

The Galapagos is an archipelago of volcanic islands in the middle of nowhere. It is in between South America and French Polynesia. Even though they lie on the equator, these islands can be surprisingly cold at times. We are in one of the hottest months of the year and the highest we’ve seen the water temperature was 72 degrees F. Right now it’s 67 and we’ve even seen 65. The reason why it is chilly is because of ocean currents bringing cold water from farther south, including the Humboldt and Cromwell Currents.

We dropped anchor in Wreck Bay, San Cristobal Island, after sailing from Panama for eight days. The first animal we saw was a sea lion. It was swimming with two people right in the anchorage. Then another sea lion appeared and swam right next to us. Mom tried to get lots of pictures. Wreck Bay is capital of the Galapagos, a province of Ecuador. Most of the people here are Ecuadorians. Lots of families ride together on motor scooters and bicycles. The people are really nice. This is a typical scene in Baquerizo Moreno (Wreck Bay).

In Wreck Bay I walked with my sister and two friends, Mara and Ian from another sailboat, Island Spirit, over to the Galapagos National Park Interpretation Center. We learned a lot about the Galapagos there, including history and science.

We learned that 97% of the land in the Galapagos lies inside the Galapagos National Park. There are lots of rules that you have to follow, including no taking of any shells, wood, bones or any natural things.

Sea Lions – These playful marine mammals are very curious and social animals. At night here in the center of the town of Wreck Bay a colony of sea lions takes over an entire large beach. They come up as far as the middle of the main street along the water. They bark and waddle a lot. Some sound like sheep. They make a racket. Sometimes they fight. Once I saw a baby sea lion waddle over to its family and flop down right on top of one of its siblings. The baby sea lions are so cute. Sea lions do not look at all like lions but they sure act like them. In the Galapagos “fur seals” and sea lions are cousins, both really sea lions. I have not seen any fur seals. They are very shy. Sea lions are graceful in the water. On land, sea lions are very awkward looking. Male sea lions have bumps on their heads. The sea lions that are in the Galapagos are a little smaller than their California cousins.

Once I swam with sea lions. While I was hanging off the bow of our tour boat anchored for lunch at Champion Island, a sea lion swam up to me and got so close that if I reached out I could touch it. But then it dove down under the boat. The sea lion did not want to be touched and also, it’s against the National Park rules to touch wild animals.

Earlier Dad and I snorkeled over near these rocks where three sea lion pups were playing. They nipped at each other just a few inches from us. One pup was very small and spotted and had a little black nose. It was sooooo cute. I love sea lions. Swimming with them was an amazing experience.

This female sea lion let us get very close to it. When I put my foot a little too close she growled and lunged at us and we ran back.

We watched a mommy and her pup cuddle in the sand after a long session of nursing. The sound of the pup’s sucking is very loud.

Look closely and you’ll see sea lions lounging on their favorite local boats. Some of these boat owners put barbed wire around the perimeter of their boats to keep the sea lions out. It doesn’t work, as you can see.

Our two friends Ian and Mara on Island Spirit named these sea lions, Ian and Mara, which had spent the night on their transom. One even clambered up into the cockpit and scared Ian downstairs.

This sea lion was sunbathing on the rocks by the main drop-off and pick-up area for water taxis and dinghies in Wreck Bay, San Cristobal Island.

Marine Iguanas’ diet consists of red and green algae and minute crabs. They avoid the large brown seaweed. They seem to spend a lot of time sunning on rocks and spitting. They take in so much salt that they get rid of by sneezing. But it looked (and felt) to me more like spitting. We saw lots of marine iguanas on the volcanic rocks along the beaches. Of all the animals I’ve seen in Galapagos, marine iguanas and giant tortoises have been the easiest to photograph because they are so still. Sea Lions have been the jumpiest.

A Marine Iguana’s head typically looks encrusted in salt from sneezing out excess salt. They look like dinosaurs. Just look at this one.

Lava Lizards are really fast. When you get close they bob their heads up and down. It is very funny. We saw these all along the beach near the marine iguanas.

Galapagos Cotton Blossom – These flowers are the largest of all the native plants in the Galapagos. The seeds of Galapagos cotton are waterproof and float. This is why scientists think they arrived in the Galapagos by floating with currents from South America. It then probably evolved to suit the particular climate and conditions in the Galapagos, including little rainfall. With the seeds comes white lint, giving the plant its name: Galapagos Cotton.

Giant Tortoises -- These huge reptiles in the Galapagos are endangered species. They have been over-hunted by pirates, whalers and other sailors (but not nowadays or by us), settlers and prisoners. When I talk about giant tortoises, I mean GIANT tortoises. They are HUGE. No wonder it can take up to eight people to lift one. I saw an old giant tortoise. Its shell was very worn. They can live up to 180 years. Giant tortoises have heads that look like a dinosaur’s. Did you know that giant tortoises can eat poison? There is a tree called the poison apple tree. It has fruits that smell like apples. If a human eats a fruit from the poison apple tree they can die in minutes because we have a high metabolism. But if a giant tortoise eats a fruit it won’t die because the poison breaks down before it can do any harm because it can take up to three months for a giant tortoise to digest one meal. I don’t really get it but it is amazing.

We visited a “Galapaguera” on San Cristobal where scientists are trying to reintroduce endangered giant tortoises to an area in the southern part of San Cristobal Island where they have become extinct. They are bringing giant tortoises from the northern part of the island where they still exist naturally.

Tortoises still need water, even though they can exist for about a year without it, if they have to.

You have to be careful when you take photographs of tortoises. If you use a flash they get very stressed.

Giant tortoises have very wrinkled skin. This one got scared when I took its picture, even though I didn’t use a flash. That’s why its head is inside its shell. You can tell how old a giant tortoise is by counting the rings on a plate of its shell. If the rings are too worn down to be counted the tortoise is older than about 60 years.

Mara, Ian, Abigail and I walked around an almost perfectly round lake within an old volcanic crater. We watched lots of frigate birds fly over the lake. Some had red pouches under their beaks.

Frigatebirds – These big black birds are very interesting. First of all, even though frigatebirds are seabirds, they can’t let saltwater wet their feathers. This is because they don’t have oil in their feathers. If their feathers are soaked by seawater, the salt will weigh them down and they will die of exhaustion. So, instead of dive-bombing for fish like blue-footed boobies, or gracefully eating minute shrimp and crabs like flamingoes, frigatebirds snatch food from other birds above the surface of the water. That’s how they get the name “pirates of the air.”

During the courting season, male frigatebirds have show-offy red pouches starting under the beak and dangling down almost to their feet. The purpose is to attract a female. The red pouch is the size of a partially inflated soccer ball.

Blue-footed Boobies – My absolute most favorite bird in the whole Galapagos archipelago is the blue-footed booby, mostly for its blue feet and the characteristic bullet-like nose-dive. Blue-footed boobies do not have twig nests. Instead they have a scratched out depression in the dusty ground. Typically the nest has a white guano ring around it. To strengthen the bonds between them, a courting pair of blue-footed boobies will take turns laying down twigs or stones in a patch of ground they chose as the nesting site. This is done with great ceremony. It has no practical value though because all of it will be swept away by someone’s wing or foot to make room for the new eggs. Blue-footed booby siblings are very mean to each other. For instance, the older chick might shove the younger chick out of the nest boundaries. If that happens, the parents will reject the chick as possibly some other blue-footed booby’s chick. This leaves more food for the older chick to survive on. Once I saw a blue-footed booby land on the ground. Just before it landed it stuck out its feet like blue stoplights. This behavior is called the “salute.” I could watch these birds all day. By the way, we never got a picture of a booby’s bright blue feet. Thank you, Abigail, for drawing this great picture. The bird flying in the top of the next photo is a blue-footed booby and you can’t really see them but there are also lots of boobies on their nests on the slopes of this island.

A Galapagos nature story.

Once, about 20 feet from Estrela, we watched the most amazing sight. A sea lion was just swimming along. Then it spotted a fish swimming on the top of the water. The sea lion jumped out of the water and almost landed on top of the fish. Just then, a blue-footed booby dive-bombed out of the sky and snatched the newly-caught fish from the sea lion’s nose. But as the blue-footed booby was rising into the air, struggling with the large fish, a frigate bird pirate was swiftly maneuvering at the sight of fresh fish. It sped over to the booby, knocked it and gathered the fish into its beak. Unfortunately for him a big adult brown pelican was gliding on the surface of the water (Pelicans have oil in their feathers). Then the Pelican shot upwards like an arrow and rammed into the frigatebird, loosening the fish from its grasp. The pelican then flew straight down, caught the fish in the air, landed gracefully in the water and gobbled the fish down. The angry sea lion that had originally caught the fish launched itself out of the water and tried to hit the pelican so it could get the fish back. But the pelican flew off. This whole scene took less than ten seconds.

Speedy Sally Lightfoot crabs are everywhere on the rocks. These two are dead, but are still brightly colored. It was really easy to photograph them. If they were alive they would scramble into a crevice in one second.

We visited a bay full of sea turtles in Floreana Island. The sea turtles were there because there was lots of algae to eat. We got into the water and snorkeled around looking for them, but you couldn’t see them when you were under water because the water was too murky. So we stood on a rock and looked at the heads popping out. We got really close. We didn’t take any pictures of them because it would be too hard to keep the camera dry. So Abigail drew this picture. Thank you, Abigail.

Flamingoes are very nervous birds. To be able to watch them (on Floreana Island) we had to be absolutely silent. Flamingoes are so beautiful. To get their pinkish color they have to eat small crabs and pink shrimp.

All Darwin’s finches look almost the same. They are mostly black. There are thirteen different species of Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos. The basic difference among them is their bill. Some have pointy bills like the Darwin’s warbler finch, and some have very large, dull bills for crushing, like the Darwin’s large ground finch. Charles Darwin was a scientist who visited the Galapagos for five weeks in the year 1835. While he was here he studied many animals including the birds that we now call Darwin’s finches. His research on these birds helped lead him to develop the theory of evolution. Evolution is when one species changes into a whole different other species, over generations. For instance, the Darwin’s finches are all related to finches on the mainland of South America. But each Darwin’s finch has evolved to have a special bill best for eating a particular seed, butterfly, or plant. This special characteristic allowed the birds to survive droughts and famines.

Mara, Ian, Abigail and I are standing on this bucket to look for the yellow-orange fruit of the guava trees as we are driving along a dirt road on Floreana Island. Guava fruits are very delicious. Guava trees are introduced plants that have overtaken much of the natural landscape on some of the Galapagos Islands, including San Cristobal and Floreana. Introduced species brought by humans are one of the biggest problems for this archipelago. Our tour guide told us we could eat all the guava fruits we wanted because there are too many of these trees and they are trying to get rid of them.

This man climbed aboard our truck with his daughter and his gun. He was going up in the hills to hunt wild goats, another introduced species. I gave a shell and some pretzels to his daughter. When we were going underneath a guava tree he grabbed a ripe yellow guava fruit and gave it to us. Dad split it up and gave a little bit to each of us. Mara found we could even eat the skin. I love guava fruits because they taste so good, but I am not happy about the trees because they are causing devastation to the natural plants.

This is one of the few natural springs in the dry Galapagos. It flowed down into a trough of water that went down into the small town’s water supply on Floreana. We filled up our water bottles here. The water tasted fresh and very cold.

When we were heading back down to the truck we saw a family with two donkeys coming along the path. They were headed for the natural spring to fill up their big plastic water jugs carried in cow-hide bags lashed onto the donkeys.

These rocks high up on a hill were a pirates’ lair long ago. The pirates used this place to hide out and watch for passing ships.

Here’s where one family of pirates probably had their kitchen and dining room. This room was chiseled out of the rock.

This big head is very old. I don’t know why they made it. It even has fern hair.

This is my bed in the hotel on Floreana Island where we stayed one night. It was really nice to be sleeping in a real bed on dry land with the waves crashing outside the window. The bed was very creaky. The hotel had really, really great food. We had German pancakes for breakfast, with home-made bread. For dinner we had beef stew, home-made bread and rice and desert was fresh fruit cocktail. A German-Ecuadorian family runs the hotel which they’ve owned since early in the 20^th century.

This is the guest book in our hotel. You can see Island Spirit’s entry at the top and ours below it.

The sunset on Floreana was very beautiful. I took lots of pictures.

Next we are sailing to French Polynesia. We will sail to the Gambier Islands first, if the wind lets us, or else to the Marquesas. This is Abigail’s picture of Estrela. In the stern the big yellow thing is a bunch of bananas that we got here.

This is me, Mara and Abigail playing Simon Says with Mom in Wreck Bay. I’m going to miss the Galapagos when we leave later today.

Author’s note: First I wrote the long sections in my paper journal. Then Dad typed them into the computer and added pictures from our three cameras. Then I wrote the rest of the captions with Dad’s help. Mom, Dad and I took the pictures. Abigail drew the illustrations of some animals that we didn’t photograph. Thank you, family. – Eliza Hopkins

Appendix

Here is a list of animals Estrela’s crew have identified in the Galapagos:

Birds

Blue-footed Booby

Masked Booby

Frigatebird (either Magnificent or Great)

Swallow-tailed Gull

Galapagos Petrel

Waved Albatross

Galapagos Penguin

Red-billed Tropicbird

Brown Pelican

Lava Heron

Greater Flamingo

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Yellow Warbler

Chatham Mockingbird

Darwin’s Finch (not sure which species)

White-checked (Bahama) Pintail Duck

Marine Mammals

Galapagos Sea Lion

Dolphin (not sure which species)

Orca

Reptiles

Giant Tortoise

Green Sea Turtle

Lava Lizard

Marine Iguana

Various unidentified small lizards, possibly other lava lizards and geckoes

Land Mammals

Feral donkeys

Pet dogs and cats

Fish

Moorish Idol

White-banded Angelfish

Butterfly fish

Puffer fish (not sure of specific species, quite large)

Yellow-bellied Triggerfish

Parrotfish (not sure of specific species, had a big bump on its forehead)

Yellow-tailed Surgeonfish

Hieroglyphic Hawkfish (a kind of grouper)

Eastern Pacific Sergeant Major

Spotted Eagle Ray

Other marine life

Sally Lightfoot Crab

Green Sea Urchin

Pencil-spined sea urchin

Gulf Star

Various other colorful sea stars

Various small formations of hard and soft coral

Insects

Carpenter Bee

Mosquito

Unidentified wasp (with a very painful sting)

Unidentified butterflies and moths

Giant Crab Spider