Galapagos Islands: 'A zoo without cages'
ACTIVE CRUISE | At the Galapagos Islands, come for the animals, stay for the animals
The equatorial sun bore down as we stretched out on the deck of our ship, Isabela II.
Fifteen of us -- six couples and three women who left our husbands at home -- were sailing through the Galapagos Islands last month on an eight-day cruise with the active travel company Butterfield & Robinson. You don't always find "active travel" and "cruise" in the same sentence, and that's a big part of what appealed to me about this trip: lots of hiking, snorkeling and kayaking; less of the midnight buffets and learning how to fold napkins into animal shapes.
(Lori Rackl/Sun-Times)
PHOTO GALLERY
Galapagos Islands
GETTING THERE: Cruising is the best way to see the Galapagos Islands, located about 600 miles west of mainland Ecuador. Most cruise passengers fly into Quito, Ecuador, and spend a day or two there before flying to Guayaquil, where you catch another flight to the Galapagos island of Baltra. It takes about three hours to fly from Quito to Baltra, including the stop in Guayaquil. Butterfield & Robinson's trip price includes the cost of your Quito to Baltra flights. No airlines fly nonstop between Chicago and Quito, but American, Continental and Delta offer one-stop flights. In early April, I paid $632 for a roundtrip ticket on American with a short layover in Miami.
WHEN TO GO: The islands are a year-round destination, with warmer temperatures (low 80s) and a greater chance of rain between December and May. From June to November, temperatures drop about 10 degrees, there's less rain and the seas get a bit choppier. In early April, the birdlife was abundant, seas were relatively calm and the water was warm enough to spend a couple hours a day snorkeling in a short wet suit.
CRUISE DETAILS: Butterfield & Robinson's next Galapagos cruise is "Galapagos With the Kids," July 7-15. Children must be at least 8 years old. The eight-night trip includes one night at the Swissotel in Quito and seven nights on board the Isabela II. The cost is $7,995 a person and includes lodging, internal airfare, meals, alcohol and the $100 entry fee to the Galapagos National Park. A similar sailing is scheduled for Dec. 22-30 and costs $9,495 a person. The next adults-only Galapagos cruise is Nov. 13-21 on board the recently refitted ship, La Pinta, which is comparable in size to the Isabela II. That costs $7,995 a person, and the company is waiving the single supplement usually charged to solo travelers wanting their own cabin. Butterfield & Robinson also can arrange private Galapagos sailings throughout the year. Call (866) 551-9090 or visit www.butterfield.com. Other companies offering Galapagos cruises include Geographic Expeditions, www.geoex.com, and Lindblad Expeditions at www.expeditions.com.
TIPS: Bring bug spray and strong sunscreen -- you're at the equator. Prepare to take at least twice as many pictures as you planned and pack an underwater, disposable camera. Don't worry about changing over money; Ecuador's currency is the U.S. dollar.
The other part that appealed to me: location. This was the Galapagos, a place where flirty sea lions can turn grown-ups into giggling kids, where birds don't take to the air as soon as they see you coming, and where the wildlife is just as riveting above sea level as below.
It's a place that influenced Charles Darwin and changed the way we think about evolution -- at least those of us who aren't school board members in Kansas.
It's also a place some worry is a victim of its own success, threatened by the growing number of people who come to live and play in this fragile environment some 600 miles off the coast of mainland Ecuador.
But I'll get to all that later. Back to lounging on the sun deck.
Our group had just returned to the Isabela II after a nature walk along the coal-black lava rocks and sandy beach, where we'd seen the chalk white skeleton of a whale, among other things. We'd kicked off our hiking boots and were cooling down with fresh guava juice when the voice of our head guide, Christina, came over the ship's intercom.
Christina didn't sound happy. She ordered us below deck -- immediately. Her tone made it clear we weren't about to play bingo.
The 15 of us filed into the downstairs bar.
"We have a problem," Christina said in that shaky voice you get when trying not to cry. "The park service saw one of you take a skull from the island."
"You cannot remove anything from the islands," she went on, dripping with disappointment. "This is very, very serious, guys. They might make us cut the trip short."
The tension felt heavy enough to sink our boat -- and force a confession.
"Stop! Stop! " yelled Book Editor Sue in her thick New Yawk accent. "I did it, OK? I took it! I thought it was wood!"
Had this been MTV, Ashton Kutcher would've materialized to tell our guide she'd just been punked.
"Gotcha!" someone yelled at Christina, who shot a confused look at the boat's captain, who was in on our ruse. The stern-faced captain broke out laughing. So did Christina -- once she finished crying.
I share this story not to show that we were a bunch of miscreants who relished reducing our guide to tears. I tell it because it illustrates the difference between cruising on a big ship and a small one.
On a boat with only 20 passenger cabins, there's an intimacy you won't find on mega ships. This can be good or bad, depending on your perspective -- and your fellow travelers. As for me, I liked getting to know the people with whom I was traveling: Book Editor Sue and Doctor Dave. Peggy from Boston. American Lisa and Canadian Lisa. (Guess which Lisa brought a copy of The 100 Greatest Hockey Arguments.)
Camaraderie wasn't the only upside to being on a smaller ship. Fifteen passengers means no wasted time waiting in long lines for shore excursions -- or food. And yachts this size are nimble and easy to maneuver, so you can sail into that secluded cove or access places the big boys can't. This is a huge plus in the Galapagos, an archipelago of 13 volcanic islands and dozens more dollops of lifeless lava rock poking out of the Pacific.
For almost everyone on the trip, the Galapagos was a place we'd been wanting to visit for a long, long time. It took most of us at least four flights and a good chunk of change to make it happen. And here we finally were, a bunch of strangers, having just landed on the Galapagos military base island of Baltra. We climbed into a couple inflatable motor boats, or "pangas," for a quick shuttle to Isabela II, our floating home for the next eight days.
The Galapagos wasted no time wowing us. On our way to the ship, our panga passed right by big green sea turtles getting busy making little green sea turtles. The real-life Discovery Channel odyssey continued as soon as we boarded the Isabela II and saw more than a dozen Galapagos sharks loitering below, while blue-footed boobies dive-bombed the water to snag unsuspecting fish for lunch. I'd snapped 40 photos before we hoisted the anchor.
Over the next week, our animal encounters were about to get a lot more up close and personal. The isolation and unique makeup of these islands means much of the wildlife has no fear. If you don't watch where you're going, you easily can step on one of the chubby, prehistoric-looking iguanas sunning themselves on the walking trails. Go for a snorkel and the sea lions can't wait to get up in your grill, blowing bubbles at your masked face. You won't get that at Fisherman's Wharf.
Bird nerds might as well leave their binoculars at home. The blue-footed boobies barely budged when I bent down to get a closer look at their trademark feet. A couple of flightless cormorants didn't seem to mind as we stood right there while the male "proposed" to his sweetheart by presenting her with a big clump of algae. Like most women, she wanted something with a little more bling.
"The females like bright, shiny things," explained Socrates Tomala, one of our three naturalists on board. "One got a Coke can, and we had a hard time taking it away from her."
The coolest courtship ritual we witnessed came courtesy of the great frigate bird, a shameless freeloader that swipes food and nesting materials from unsuspecting boobies. The male great frigate birds try to attract the lady birds flying overhead by inflating big red pouches in their necks. Galapagos author Kurt Vonnegut described the view from above as "an enormous party for human children, at which every child had received a red balloon."
These are the sights that lured more than 127,000 visitors to the Galapagos last year. You don't come for lush, tropical scenery or five-star resorts. It's all about the animals, and I could fill the rest of this Travel section describing the sally light-foot crabs that moved like ballerinas over the porous rocks, the green sea turtle that came ashore to lay dozens of eggs, the chocolate chip starfish that looked good enough to eat, and the white-tipped shark that made me wish wet suits came with built-in diapers.
Night after night, our group would convene on the ship's deck to watch the sun go down, sip pisco sours and pass our digital cameras around, oohing and aahing at the best animal shots of the day.
"It's like a zoo without cages," said American Lisa's husband, Dave.
"This is as close to a religious experience as I've ever had," added American Lisa, who has a doctorate in marine biology. "But I'm an atheist."
Much of the Galapagos wildlife exists nowhere else but on these isolated islands, which made an ideal laboratory for young Charles Darwin. The subtle differences Darwin noticed among birds and animals from one island to another -- differences that allowed them to survive in their respective environments -- helped him formulate his theory on evolution through natural selection, an idea detailed in his revolutionary book, On the Origin of Species, which turns 150 next year.
The most northerly penguins in the world call these islands home. Same goes for the marine iguana, a fascinating reptile that can stay underwater for nearly an hour. And who could forget the Galapagos giant tortoises, 500-plus-pound creatures brought to the brink of extinction by whalers and pirates who saw them as ginormous tubs of Spam, full of meat that could be devoured after months at sea.
More recently, the tortoises' biggest threat has come from animals like goats, which have no business being on the islands. Brought in by humans, they hog the grass the tortoises rely on for food.
Something as harmless as a goat can throw an entire ecosystem on its head in a place like the Galapagos. So can tourism.
"This island [Santa Cruz] is getting submerged in rubbish from the tour boats," said Godfrey Merlen, a 37-year resident of the island and member of WildAid, one of the conservationist groups Butterfield & Robinson helps support. "One of the greatest risks for the Galapagos are the airplanes. They've brought over two species of mosquitoes that are highly dangerous to the birds on these islands."
Tourists aren't the only ones to blame. Although they outnumber locals on airplanes by two to one, airport inspections in 2002 revealed it's the locals who brought in three-quarters of introduced species, according to the excellent book Lonesome George: The Life and Loves of a Conservation Icon (Macmillan, $14.95). Of course, a lot of the locals moved here because there's good money to be made catering to the tourists. (The Ecuadorian government virtually put a stop to migration from the mainland to the islands a decade ago.)
Problems aren't confined to the land, either. Big money is being made poaching sea cucumbers and shark fins from the surrounding waters.
These sticky issues landed the Galapagos Islands -- the first place designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978 -- on UNESCO's danger list last year.
"I just really wanted to see this place now, before it's too late," Canadian Lisa said.
All told, our ship cruised 491 nautical miles in just over a week, visiting many of the main islands. Some spots we had to ourselves. Others, like Santa Cruz (population nearly 30,000), felt overrun with tourists. But each place held something special -- extroverted birds, fascinating fish, an exhilarating hike around one of the world's largest volcanic craters. What made it more special was recapping the day's adventures each night on Isabela II's deck, under the Southern Cross and an upside down Big Dipper.
Late one evening, as we were about to cross the equator, the captain called us into the ship's bridge.
Wearing party hats and holding glasses of bubbly Veuve Clicquot, we waited for the captain's countdown, "3, 2, 1." As soon as we crossed that imaginary line bisecting the earth into southern and northern hemispheres, we broke into loud cheers and clinked champagne glasses.
Huddled together in the ship's cozy bridge, it felt like celebrating New Year's Eve with friends -- just one more benefit to cruising on a small ship.