More Galapagos

I keep trying to load more pictures but it isn´t working. More importantly, if anyone thinks they might want to come to South America this summer, let me know soon and maybe we can do some traveling together. There´s some pretty cool stuff here....Lots in the southern part of Peru to the Bolivia border (including Machu Picchu) and then many things close to Quito, which I´ll be visiting in the last week or two of July. If I last that long.

So I´d always thought from pictures that the Galapagos were rather ugly. They certainly arent lush tropical paradises - no palm trees, no green hills (there are volcanos though).´But being there there were much more beautiful than in the pictures. One island especially was covered with bery short shrubs of a bright red cover. On that island were also many iguanas, who let you get incredibly close (the hallmark of the Galapagos). Our guide told us they are vegetarians, but then we came across one that was eating the carcass of a baby sea lion. Maybe we were the first people in history to witness a carnivorous land iguana? That island is also where bachelor sea lions go to die (we saw evidence of a big one that had reached that day) and a petrified land iguana that was straight out of Jurassic Park, mouth open with teeth bared and everything (only he was about 12 inches long, not 30 feet).

As for things we saw. Tons of birds and their funny mating ritual dances. We saw one for the waved albatross that involved a lot of hitting the beaks together and ducking up and down. One a female has picked a mate it seems his next task is to collect sticks to build a nest with. Then there´s another kind of bird, the frigate, that doesn´t catch his own fish or find his own sticks - he simply steals it from other (smaller) birds as they are flying around! We were lucky to see right on the path an unusually colored red-footed booby - most of them are brown, only 5% are white and we saw one at the very beginning. some of you might not think that is very interesting, and trust me that I didn´t think much of birds before I went to the Galapagos, but when you get there and they´re so close and sometimes so funny, you get to like them.

We saw land tortoises in both the Charles Darwin Research Station and in the wild. They are really big and have two defense mechanisms. One of course is retreating into their shell. The other is once they have done that, to make a hissing sound. It isn´t at all menacing but maybe it would be to a non-human predator. Although I think once they´ve reached 4 years old they don´t have predators. We saw sea turtles in the water, calmly swimming around and munching leaves under water. I thought one was going to press his face into my mask. I didn´t think the sea lions that swam with us were quite as friendly and curious as the guidebooks say they will be. But there´s 100,000 visitors to the islands each year, maybe the sea lions have gotten over their curiousity.

The hammerheads were great even though the water visibility wasn´t that great, meaning you could see more their very distincitive shape than any details, like the eyes (unlike some underwater pictures I´ve seen, where there´s 50 hammerheads floating in crystal clear water. Which might be a little scary). One of the people on the trip had a digital camera that could go underwater and he got a great pic of one. There were maybe 6-8 hammerheads but they kept their distance - I think they were scared of us. Our guide told us there is a lot of illegal shark fishing, and just a few weeks ago they caught a boat with tons of sharks. But I´m not sure that can explain them being shy - how quickly does that kind of behavior manifest itself? Because the water was cold, a lot of the group had already gotten back in the dingy, but from up above they were able to see where the sharks were (the water was maybe 20 feet deep) and so they would point them out and we´d frantically swim over to where they were pointing...or say "they´re over here too!" It was very exciting. Earlier in that snorkel some of us had seen a school of about 30 rays (not sure what kind). So the freezing was worth it to see some tiburons! On the dingy ride back to the big boat, we were all shivering, but I think it was half from being cold and half from adrenaline at seeing maneaters. Hammerheads can be dangerous but usually aren´t, and I read that since there is enough food in the Galapagos, they rarely attack humans (I think you are statistically more likely to be bitten by a male sea lion protecting his harem - sometimes 25 females!). The poor male sea lions. Once they gather up their posse, they spend the rest of their time gruarding them. While the women and children laze around on the beach or go surfing (really) the male swims up and down the streach of beach where his women live, making sure no other man comes over to steal them away. He also does a lot of barking. The sea lions made lots of noises actually, of varying sounds, and like humans they cough and sneeze and sometimes have snotty noses (I backed away from that one).

Other mammals we saw were common dolphins. One afternoon when we were motoring between islands, one of the crew came to the back where some of us were reading to say "dolphins!" We all rushed to the front and didnt see anything at first...and then they appeared. Far, though. Maybe 200 meters (I´m terrible at estimating distance). They were all heading perpendicular to our path, so we sort of crossed them. There were maybe 100 (I´m also terrible at estimating numbers of people in a crowd and that sort of thing). Some of them were jumping up in the air for no apparent reason. It was kind of a "woo hoo, I can fly!" kind of leap. So beautiful. And I enjoyed seeing common dolphins even though I worked with bottlenose dolphins - it is always good to see something new. I was kind of surprised they didn´t have an interest in the boat´s wake like bottlenose dolphins in the Caribbean do, but I guess every dolphin is different.

So I didn´t want to spend all afternoon at the computer yet that is what I´ve done. At least I got 15 minutes of culture in when I went to the museum of modern art. Like all modern art musuems, it had the requisite video installation with naked people (can you tell I don´t really "get" modern art?). Now that I know when I´m leaving Cuenca (I think) I can get down to visiting tourist sites...one a day should be fine.