![]() I find the blue‐footed boobies the most beguiling birds on the islands. They were stored alive in the ships' holds, where they could survive for a year or more without food, thus providing the crews with a supply of fresh meat. Prized for their meat and oil-and totally defendeless-the tortoises fell victim to every ship that sailed the Galapagos waters. Darwin wrote that he had heard of one frigate taking aboard 200 of the giant tortoises in a single day. In the eighteen‐sixties the crew of a single ship is reported to have slaughtered 5,000 fur seals. Their trustfulness is somehow very moving, when you think that for more than a hundred years buccaneers, sealers and whalers invariably have repaid the animals friendliness with savagery. ![]() We find ourselves walking right up to them, and would have touched them if we hadn't been firmly discouraged from doing so. They are enchanting -and completely unafraid of us. The most exciting part of a Galapagos cruise, of course, is seeing the birds and animals. Even though the islands are at latitude zero, the Humboldt Current from the Antarctic keeps them from being oppressively hot. Before turning in, however most of the passengers go on deck for a panoramic view of the stars, which seem to hang 30 feet overhead in the clear air. Anyone wandering into the bar after 9 P.M. bugle, almost everyone hits the bunk early. Weary and sun‐baked, and mindful of the 5:45 A.M. Dinner is at 7 and at 8 a guide gives a talk-usually illustrated by slides or a film-on what we will see the next day. By 5 o'clock we're on the ship once more. Some days, after the field trip, we swim or snorkel. After an hour or two the ship drops anchor off another island and we're back to shore. The flies can be fierce, especially those that gather around herds of basking sea lions.) At 10:30 or 11, when the equatorial sun begins to get brutal, we return to the Floreana, where a cold Ecuadorian beer tastes wonderful. We spend two or three hours each morning walking along paths near the shore, being introduced to the birds and animals, and examining plants, rock formations and insects. One is a biologist named Stephen Grosvenor, who recently served in the Peace Corps, another a young German zoologist, Dr. The guides are dedicated and knowledgeable. Each has a guide who expounds on the geology, flora and fauna of the island, and who sees to it that his group treats the animals-and the environment-with care. ![]() We clamber up sharp lava rocks or wade onto a sandy beach, holding snorkels and cameras head high above the waves. Breakfast is at 6:15, and at 7 the ship drops anchor off one of the islands and we go ashore in a small tender. The ship is woefully deficient in creature comforts, and a squawk box in all the cabins routs out the passengers at 5:45 A.M. The 13 main islands, as well as hundreds of islets and rocks, covering an area about 150 miles in diameter, are now an Ecuadorian national park, insuring that these islands and their denizens will be preserved for future generations to see, study-and wonder at.Ī Floreana cruise is not the restful, luxurious sort of thing to recommend to a dowager great‐aunt. The Galapagos Islands, which lie 600 miles west of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean, directly on the Equator, are essentially the way they were when Charles Darwin visited them in 1835 and gathered the clues that were to lead to his theory of evolution. From the summit of the craters huge ropes of black lava stretch down to the sea, so raw they seem to have cooled only a week ago. Some are as baleful as moonecapes, their volcanic craters ringed by satellite cones. On every horizon are islands of desolate, primordial beauty. I'm face‐to‐face with eerie, prehistoric‐looking birds that exist nowhere else in the world and are amazingly unafraid of me. I walk among iguanas the size of small dinosaurs. Soon after arriving, I have the feeling I've set it back millions of years. AS the jet‐prop leaves Ecuador's coastal city of Guayaquil for the island of Belira, where a ship is to take me about the Galapagos Islands, I set my watch back one hour.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |