Day of GIANT tortoises



Jane in Puerto Ayura

Monday May 27th

This was a day for giant tortoises.

 

After anchoring the night before in Puerto Ayora, we were ferried ashore next morning in our panga.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We drove part of the way back up the highway (my seventh trip!)to Manzanillo Ranch, named after the poisonous apple trees that grow there; they are eaten by the tortoises as a chemical control for their internal parasites.

 

Our tour group finds its first tortoise near a mud wallow

 

(Guide Diego and Drew ignoring the immobile rock on the path)

 

 

 

 

We hiked around the ranch, finding more than six wild Santa Cruz tortoises of various sizes, and could see their mud wallows in wetter times. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the tortoises were lurking near wild passion-fruit vines; along with guavas, one of their favourite foods (we ate some too).  

 

 

 

 

 

Santa Cruz Darwin finch with yellow bill

 

Dull brown Darwin finches and grey mocking birds were also in the forest.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the way back to the highway we stopped to look at some lava tubes, created when the hot lava kept flowing under a hardened crust.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Two lovely barn owls had taken up residence in one of them.

 

 

 

 Near the entrance we saw a Scalesia tree - it is the tree that dominates the vegetation in the higher parts of many islands.  It is not a true tree, but a giant member of the daisy family (Asteraceae).

 

 

Start of our Galapagos Cruise on Nemo II

 

Sunday May 26 th.
After a leisurely breakfast at Red Mangrove, with the sea lions lounging on the lounges and the pelicans doing their morning ablutions in the next bay, we headed north across Santa Cruz Island, to catch the ferry across the Itabaca canal to Baltra Island to meet up with our cruise group. (My sixth trip to the canal!)

 Jenny was anxiously awaiting our arrival. It was lovely to see her again and exchange family news.

While waiting on the wharf for our panga (zodiac), I found some sea anemones on the rocks and Drew paced out the length of a wind turbine blade awaiting installation (30 metres). Finally were on board the Nemo II, a lovely catamaran with two jibs and a mainsail. It had six double cabins for passengers plus crew of Captain Antonia, first mate, engineer, steward/barman Ernesto, cook, panga driver and our naturalist guide, Diego. There was a saloon midship, dining area on the covered aft deck and seating on the cabin top. The wheel was on the open deck but the chart table was in the saloon. We had one of the two ‘matrimonial’ cabins with a double bed under a porthole (that let water in during rougher weather), a small desk, cupboard and ensuite bathroom with a hand-held shower over the toilet! The other four cabins with twin bunks were down a ladder, tucked into each of the pontoons but on top of the engines.

heading out to Nemo II in the panga, Jenny in the bow.

There were 12 passengers from around the globe. We shared our meals with Holly and David, both entomologists (dean and lecturer) at South Dakota University, Jenny and her cabin-mate, Patricia, a California engineer and sea lion rescuer in her spare time. The other table was for the younger set, half of whom spoke German: Oliver and Patricia, Reimo and Charlotte, all from Austria, and Scott (earthquake modeller and potter) and Suzanne, (neurologist, knitter and dyer) from California. We were an eclectic bunch who had lots of hard questions for our guide, Diego, but he always had an answer (his knowledge on all aspects of the Islands was prodigious).

After a general briefing, while the crew loaded on many crates of fresh food, we motored (navigated) to North Seymour Island. 

Like Baltra, North Seymour is a flat lava plate remnant from islands even older than Santa Cruz.  Birds flying everywhere, dominated by magnificent frigate birds we had not seen since Papua New Guinea.

Our first ‘activity’ for the trip was our first deep water snorkelling, jumping in off the panga, which motored behind us to pick up those who had had enough. The ship provided fins, mask and snorkels but we had to hire the wetsuits. Drew counted nine species of fish, including an eel I spotted slithering through the rocks. Others saw a shark and turtle.

 

Our next activity for the first day was a 'dry' landing from the panga onto North Seymour island, and a walk on a trail around the island. We were amazed at how tame all the birds were.

Male blue footed boobies were preparing their nests and performing their dance, or feeding chicks right beside or even on path, so we had to detour around them.
Look at those beautiful feet!

 

 

 

Frigate birds were wheeling right overhead, trying to steal the meals off the boobies and tropic birds (called 'kleptoparasitism'), or sitting on their nests in the trees.








 

There were a few fluffy white frigate chicks, females with white throats but lots of males with deflated throats and a couple with red balloons, vying for attention of the females.

 The vegetation was very dry, deciduous small trees and occasional cactus. One cactus had a tunnel nest with five eggs in it, probably of the cactus finch.

 

 

 

 

 

Further on, we came across some very large yellow land iguanas feeding on dead leaves; he is almost 2 metres long so to be respected as he ambled past our feet.

 

 

Some sea lions returned from fishing to waddle over the rocks to join others sun-baking on the sand.

 

Just before returning to the panga landing we had to detour around a large sea lion lying right across the path that Jenny almost walked into.

 

Can you spot it among the rocks?

 


This is what was called a dry landing, straight onto the rocks! Nemo is anchored in the distance

The first day of our cruise was very packed, with amazing views of animals close up!  We wondered what else there was to see for the rest of the week?

 

After a fine dinner, we headed south for the five hour motor to Puerto Ayoro on Santa Cruz island (where we had spent the last two days). Near Gordon Rocks some people saw rays leaping over the waves. It was quite a rough trip until in the shelter of the Puerto.

More Diving with Scuba Iguana

For the next day diving we headed back to the Itabaca Canal then loaded onto the dive boat and set off down the east side of Santa Cruz Island to Gordon Rocks, three rocks comprising the remains of the outer rim of a caldera.

 

The washing machine surge was very strong so we had to abort the first dive attempt because my buddy got separated from the group. On our next attempt we managed a swim around the steep boulder slope on the outside of the caldera, being buzzed by a sea lion that was busy hunting a school of fish, parting it as it swam through.

 In the hazy deeper water we could just make out small manta rays and a couple of shy hammerhead sharks.

Due to the rough conditions, we headed back to another site in North Seymore channel for our second dive.
Here the dive guide found us some branching black coral and some electric blue nudibranchs on the rocks.



Nudibranch, or sea slug, about 2 cm long



and I found a handsome moray eel in his hole.
 

 - not so scary since they have to have theirmouths open to breath!

(These lovely photos I have borrowed  from the Scuba Iguana guide DVD since my camera was fogging up).

 

 

 

 

And we almost stumbled on a well camouflaged weed fish. Isn't he handsome! Can you spot his eyes and mouth?

 

The highlight for me was a field of little spotted garden eels, almost half a meter tall, that slid back into their sandy burrows as we swam towards them.

They must be the inspiration for Richard Scarey's Lowly Worm!

 

 

I enjoyed sneaking up on the rays, keeping well clear of their sharp tail.












We saw quite a few white-tipped sharks trying to sleep under ledges, until we distrubed them.

.

Our safety stop was out in the channel in strong current which whizzed us along like a roller-coaster ride, until our boat came to pick us up.  We had a late lunch on the boat and headed for Puerto Ayura. The dive guides quickly put together their photos and videos they had made of the two groups diving so we could buy them, nice for those without cameras or ones that had flooded, foggy housings (like mine).

The DVDs have some good videos of the schools of fish and especially the sharks as they swam out from under their ledges, but unfortunately they are too big to download - you will have to see them next ime you visit.

 

Diving - Nth Seymore and Mosquera Islands

Jane had decided to fit in a couple of days diving (leaving Drew to sleep in peace) so picked up her gear from the Scuba Iguana soon after arrival on May 23rd. She had early starts the next two days since the divers first took taxis (dual cab utes) back to the Itabaca canal then a boat out to the dive sites.

The first day we headed north of Baltra Island to dive off North Seymore Island and then the low sandy Mosquera Island. Although almost on the equator, we dove in 5 ml wetsuits (the guide had a dry suite) because of the cold water from the Humboldt Current (about 20 – 21⁰). I should not have been surprised that there were no coral reefs – there were in fact some grey boulder corals, a few bright orange fist-sized clusters of polyps and some branching black coral with yellow polyps. However, unlike Tasmania’s very colourful encrusting animal life and lots of different algae growing on the rocks, these rocks were almost barren except for fuzzy brown algae and the ubiquitous giant barnacles in the shallows. Quite a few large seastars were grazing on the rocks, including choc-chip stars, blue or red Linkia, pencil urchins and a species of long-spined purple Centrostephanus. The latter may be the cause of the depauperate algal species.

However the fish life was abundant, with schools of surgeon fish, grunts, barracuda, families of parrot fish and wrasse and numerous other species feeding on the algae on the rocks. Big beautiful queen angel fish were very common around the boats waiting for scraps. It was also notable that, not only were there lots of fish, there were lots of BIG fish.  And apparently the fish life now is only a shadow of its former self since fishing is allowed in many areas of the marine park.  Some eastern Pacific fish species were present, such as the flute mouths and later when snorkelling we saw Moorish Idols.

But most exciting were the rays and sharks – I saw mostly white-tipped sharks but several different, large rays. During our surface interval between dives we were able to enjoy watching the frigate, tropic birds and blue-footed boobies wheel and dive (boobies) around the island (we visited this island again and saw the birds at close quarters). The Mosquera dive was an enjoyable drift dive along with the current, mostly over sand along the edge of the reef with large schools of fish.

 

Trip to Galapagos Archipelago May 2013 - Santa Cruz Island

I have wanted to go to the Galápagos ever since 1969, when my first job at La Trobe University was assisting Professor Thornton dissect and describe the Psocoptera book lice he had collected from the various Galápagos Islands.  As a biologist I was well aware of the role the islands had played in Charles Darwin’s formulation of his theory of the Origin of Species. It was brought to the attention of TV viewers more recently by David Attenborough in his excellent coverage of the biological and geological history of the islands. Most of the volcanic islands in the archipelago, like the Hawaiian islands, have been formed as the Nazca tectonic plate moves south-east at 5 cm a year over a hot spot in the earth’s crust. Española in the south east is the oldest and Fernandina in the north west is the youngest, although further north Roca Redonda is the tip of the next island that is forming.

 

Drew and I arrived on May 24th before the main cruise to have a couple of days to get over the gruelling trip: 12 hr flight Sydney to Santiago had us arriving a few hours before we left, then a 7 hr transit in the lounge (sleeping on cushions on the floor of the lounge alongside other Australians from the same flight), followed by a 4 hr flight to Guayaquil. We didn’t care that the Guayaquil hotel we had booked on the internet was rather basic – the bed was all that mattered! 
Early next morning, May 23^rd, we flew into the new airport on Baltra Island, a small Galápagos islands just north of circular Santa Cruz Island, then a bus, ferry across the Itabaca canal to Santa Cruz , and another bus finally delivered us to the Red Mangrove hotel on the harbour in Puerto Ayura , where we had breakfast and met the first local inhabitants.  

Marine iguanas and sea lions basking on the hotel deck

...and the lounges! --- reminded me of Soju.

 

Our very comfortable accommodation (4 rooms on 6 levels) was in the Divers Lodge a couple of blocks away from the main Red Mangrove Hotel.

 

The main street of the town, the tourist drag with shops and restaurants, was a short walk along the foreshore past the busy fish market, where the brown pelicans seemed to be the main customers.

Puerto Ayura fishing boats in harbour