I’ve been trying to explain to people how close you can get to the critters on the Galapagos, and I realize, it just doesn’t… you can’t explain. You can never get this close.
We could’ve gotten closer to these Nazca Boobies (or any of the critters). Only reason we kept our distance is that we were told to.
It was our last afternoon on the cruise, and we stopped off at a picture perfect white sand beach with crystal blue water lapping along the shoreline. The only thing different from this beach and some resort in the Caribbean was that the little umbrellas and benches were replaced with sea lions honking amongst themselves.
I popped into the water for a last bit of snorkeling. The water was the clearest yet, but there wasn’t anything super exciting. No sharks or sea lions or penguins. There were some rays and a couple fish I hadn’t seen before. But it was fun and relaxing.
Katie stayed on the beach, checking out the sea lions. There were some really young pups playing which made us both happy. She, for getting to see them. Me, for knowing she didn’t miss out on the cuteness I saw a couple days ago.
There’s a species of marine iguana on Isla Española called a Christmas iguana, because around Christmas, they start to turn green and red for mating season. So we were on Isla Española at the right time of year to see this:
But I’m mentally ready for the next destination, and I could feel it on this, the last hike of the cruise. The tiny, 8×8 cabin (probably smaller, actually); showering with one hand gripping a safety bar to keep from falling; sharing twin-sized sheets on a double bed… I’m ready for our check-in at the Finch Bay Hotel on Isla Santa Cruz. My heart was not in this hike.
It was also bakingly hot, and I’ve seen so many Nazca boobies and Frigate Birds and Blue-footed boobies that I had to see an interesting pattern to the shot to make it worth while. Actually, my only agenda point on this hike was to get a better shot of a pair of Nazca boobies, and I got exactly what I wanted.
Unexpected bonus: the Nazca boobies were nesting on Isla Española, and if you look carefully at the shot below, you can see a chick beneath the booby.
We arrived off Puerto Ayora, the Galapagos’ largest settlement, late last night. Plan for the day: giant tortoises.
In the morning, we hopped on a tourist bus (brand=”Buscars” which is a fun play on words if you speak both Spanish and English) and rode up to the highlands above Puerto Ayora to see giant tortoises in the wild. Before, though, we stopped off at Los Gemelos, a pair of big sink holes. The holes were… well, holes in the ground. What was funny was that we were all somewhat land-sick. I think it was the bus ride that did it, as none of us had any issues hiking on the islands. It wasn’t anything more than feeling a bit dizzy, and the dizziness, I think, was caused by many of us unconsciously swaying. I saw one woman, Sandy, rocking back and forth, and mentioned it to her. She was utterly shocked. She had no idea she was swaying.
I only noticed I was swaying when I was looking through the viewfinder of my camera, and the whole world started moving. The camera made me extra dizzy.
The tortoises, though… on the one hand, seeing a turtle that huge—big enough to ride on—just walking around in the wild was amazing. From a photographic perspective, though… First, the light was horrible. The first tortoise we saw stayed in the shade (probably to keep cool), and with the equatorial sun blasting down, you had bright light and dark shadow making super contrasty pictures. Second, the tortoises were nasty, dirty things. Faces covered in mucus, masticated vegetation and slimy muck. That didn’t make for a great picture either.
The rest of the tortoises we saw were in pools of water. Mucky, muddy, nasty, algae covered water.
I didn’t get a single shot I liked.
The afternoon… we went to the Darwin Research Center, run by the National Park. Lots of big tortoises with lots of bad lighting. No good shots there either. I snapped 130 frames, least of any day on the cruise. Maybe Katie will have some good ones.
After that, we had the afternoon to ourselves. We stopped by a little restaurant for a snack and a cool drink. Ended up having waffles with fruit, ice cream and chocolate sauce. It was delicious.
It’s hot. Really fucking hot. The path is nothing more than big huge rocks. It’s the perfect combination to twist an ankle.
The heat really slowed me down: I shot over 800 frames on the 25th. Today, despite all the bird activity, I shot about 300.
Still, I got what I wanted:a male magnificent frigate bird with its huge red pouch fully inflated.
Katie spent the afternoon on the boat resting her foot. I was worried enough about her that I suggested she depart the cruise early and stay an extra night in the Finch Bay Hotel on Isla Santa Cruz—where we’d be spending a couple days after the cruise. That would’ve solved another problem as well: earlier in the day, I had realized that I counted the days wrong, and had pre-paid the Finch Bay for a room on Saturday night (29-JAN-11). I thought that was the final day on the boat. Turned out the last day on the boat was Sunday (30-JAN-11). The Finch Bay ain’t cheap (I don’t want to say how much), and something tells me I won’t get a refund.
Over lunch, the Flamingo chugged on to Baltra island to refuel. On the way, someone shouted that Dolphins had joined us at the prow. I raced out with my camera. There were three of them, crisscrossing in front of the prow of the boat. The water was so crystal clear, it was like the dolphins were out of water.
I came down with my long lens, and had to run right back up to our cabin because the dolphins were too close. I got back down to the prow, shot a few more with my street lens, and then ran out of space on the memory card. Ran back up, got a new card… and the dolphins were gone. Katie told me that a juvenile and its mom had joined the three in front of the prow. Then all five drifted away, but not before she caught the juvenile jumping in the air above the water. It’s a great shot, but she’ll have to share it.
Katie and I spent some time before arriving at Bartolome reading the manual for our underwater camera (our early attempts had been dominated by blurry and overly green shots). Apparently, there was a setting for underwater pictures that took out the green and set the ISO high enough to reduce the blur. It worked pretty well, but nothing changed the difficulty of holding the camera still.
This was the best snorkeling of the trip. It wasn’t the clearest water, it wasn’t the biggest variety of fish. It was one thing, and one thing only. It was Galapagos penguins, about a dozen of them, swimming and eating right around me for nearly the entire time I was in the water.
They didn’t care that we were around them in the water. They didn’t even care if we touched them. Or more accurately, if they touched me (it’s against the law to t touch the critters, but they can touch you all they want). I had my hand in front of me, and one of the little guys swam right past me, brushing the tips of my fingers as he went.
The only thing I wish is that one of them would’ve paused in front of my camera just for few seconds. I have an insanely awesome shot of a penguin looking right into my camera. Except that the shot was blurry b/c the camera had focused when the penguin was a second further back.
Katie spent the dive sitting on the beach: her foot and ankle hurt too much.
The next morning, we were bound for Puerto Egas, an abandoned settlement on Isla Santiago. Katie was wiped out from the first two days—the heat plus pregnancy affected her harder than she thought it would—and she took a pass on the morning hike, choosing to sit in the shade on the sun deck of the boat and read.
So, of course, the first we saw when we landed on the beach were three sea lion pups, including an awkward, stumbling, three-week-old pup with big liquid eyes (below). It was all I could do not to scoop it up in my arms. I debated all morning about whether I should even tell her what we saw.
There was a fourth pup that wandered up the beach to us as well. It was older than the other three, and had been playing in the water. And it had a vicious pair of deep cuts on its right shoulder, the larger about eight inches long and three inches wide. The cuts weren’t bleeding, and the pup wasn’t crying out in pain (I assume it would do this), so it was probably an older wound, maybe from the previous day. Malina, our guide, told us that the pup would survive, no problem, as long as the mother continued to feed it. It still hurt to see the little guy with cuts that big.
Malina managed to tear us away from the pups to begin the hike, but we only managed to move about 30 feet inland before a tiny little yellow-brown bird—a large-billed flycatcher—started circling around us. Well, to be more accurate, around my telephoto lens. The tiny bird would just fly right up to the lens, hover there like a hummingbird for five seconds, and then fly away. Apparently, the flycatcher identifies flies by sunlight reflecting off a fly’s eye. A camera lens looks like one big old fly. One of the other passengers, Joe from Long Island, snapped a fabulous shot of the little bird buzzing my camera. I don’t have it yet, but I will get it.
It took another big effort from Malina to get us moving again. That tiny little bird was magical.
And there wasn’t much to the rest of the walk, honestly. I got some decent shots of a bird called an American Oyster Catcher snatching a Sally Lightfoot Crab and eating it.
When we returned to the beach, we went back to the Flamingo, but only for a 15-minute turnaround to put on snorkeling gear to take a swim along the beach of Isla Santiago. I saw most of the same stuff as before, but the water was a bit clearer.
And…
…There was a big marine turtle munching on the algae growing on the rocks. He wouldn’t let me swim in front of his face to get that perfect “critter looking at you” shot. But otherwise, he didn’t move very much all, just allowed himself to be pulled back and forth with the waves. It was still tough to get good shots with the underwater camera, but he gave me plenty of opportunities.
I accidentally left my wedding ring on while snorkeling, and I had to leave my left hand clenched in a fist to keep it from coming off.
As to my right calf, I barely noticed the pain from the day before at all. I think I was just dehydrated.
The Flamingo chugged along during lunch and siesta until we reached an island called Sombrero Chino mid-afternoon. It really did look like a broad-based conical Chinese Hat. Not sure why I didn’t take a picture of it.
Our underwater shots the prior times snorkeling had been green and dull. I thought maybe turning the flash on would be a good idea to brighten things up, and Katie figured out how to set it to “always on.” This wasn’t a brilliant idea, as you can see from the photo I took of her, below (the flash bounces light off of all the crap in the water).
Still, photography was easier at Chinese Hat: Malina said the water conditions were so clear that it would almost be like swimming in a fish tank. She was right. It was brilliant.
The first bit of excitement was a marine iguana feeding on algae in a tiny little inlet. With Katie and a fellow passenger, Jeff, in the inlet, I didn’t have much room to maneuver. I was so close to the iguana, the small waves were enough to move the iguana’s head in and out of the shot. I couldn’t zoom out any further, and I couldn’t move any further back with the other two people there. I ended up without any decent shots in the minute before the iguana went back on land. The shot below was the best I could manage.
The next bit of excitement turned out to be a feeding frenzy caused by lobster heads dropped off a fishing boat. In addition to huge clumps of fish, we saw a huge ray. But the water was deep enough, I couldn’t swim down to get a shot of the ray from the front.
Having the flash on all the time drained the battery fast, so we missed some penguins at the end of the swim. But it was a great day snorkeling.
After snorkeling, we had a panga (Galapaguena for "Zodiac" boat) ride along the cliff-coast of Isla Isabela to see penguins and flightless cormorants and blue-footed boobies.
I shot well over 800 today, but we saw so many blue-footed boobies on this ride, even I got tired and stopped shooting. Malina, our guide on the panga ride, told us that this wasn't normal. Most of the year, you would be happy to see thirty or forty blue-footed boobies in a day. We must have seen a thousand in just an hour on that panga.
Below is my favorite shot… at least, considering I only took a cursory swing through the hundreds of frames I shot. I'm sure there may be another one buried in there.
I haven't really gone through the penguin shots in any level of detail either. There were so many. But this one just jumped out. Look at that tongue.