From the Land of Clockwise Flushing Toilets, The Galapagos Islands

Like Bevis and Butthead, I could have stood in Quito, Ecuador flushing the toilet for what could have been days just to watch it spin clockwise. After two years without a flush toilet (or water) the novelty of such an invention is breath-taking, not to mention actually watching the Coriolis Effect pull the water in the bowl in the clockwise direction. This opposed to counter-clockwise spin in the northern hemisphere where up to this point I had spent my entire life. Fortunately, Dave stopped me before too long and we swept away to the Galapagos Islands.

Arriving at the Galapagos by plane, and like a Sula Nebouxii plunging after a fish we dropped on to the tarmac of a desert but not deserted island 1000 km from the nearest continent. The Galapagos has been a lot of things to a lot of people over the years, from tortoise hunting ground for whalers, to Charles Darwin's biological wet dream, to WWII strong hold of the USA, to the former Ecuadorian penal colony (hey get your mind out of the gutter), and now is the cornerstone of the Ecuadorian tourism industry.

The biologist's Mecca has proven to be filled with animals (as advertised), but without a masters in biology or a guide who has such a degree (most don't) it can be rather hard to pick out endemic animals or plants. This has not stopped Dave and I from running around growing pretentious beards to fit in and calling each other professor. We kept ourselves busy spending so much time (and money) swimming with the sea turtles, riding bikes and horses through the arid desert countryside looking for tortoises that needed to be saved after wandering into the road (we actually had to carry it), eating cacti fruit, gunless flamingo hunting, carrying a cow skull through lava tubes, and watching boobies; the blue-footed kind... as apposed to the red-footed variety (I told you to keep your mind out of the gutter).

We discovered there is actually an bird species called boobies the genius/species being Sula Nebouxii. There are several different varieties, and are about as common as a seagull along the ocean. As Dave and I were walking along the beach on Isabella (the big island) we may have stumbled across a conversation that Darwin and the first mate of the ship would have had when they were on the island around 150 years ago. As we were walking along there was a whole flock, gaggle, legion, band, or whatever it is you call several hundred boobies in one spot. In any case, they were fishing near shore in a very entertaining way. They would take off from the water little by little, gather together 50 ft off the ground, all tuck wing, and as one unit would kamikaze head first into the water. Dave and I stood mesmerized by the aerobatics for several minutes. I kept thinking, Blue Angels eat your heart our. When Darwin and the first mate saw this the following conversation ensued...

First mate: Have you ever seen anything that cool?
Darwin: Maybe the Coriolis Effect?
First mate: No way man!
Darwin: well... Maybe, boobies.
First mate: Yeah, possibly
Darwin: These guys sure deserve a cooler name than just the trite Sula Nebouxii that they go by now. I think I shall call them boobies.

In all seriousness, the water life turned out to be far more interesting than the land life. The highlight was our trip to Bartolomé. We almost skipped the quintessential Galapagos day trip as over done, but ended up going. It is now easy to see why everyone does it. It's worth doing! There are many large schools of fish, sharks, penguins, the occasional turtle, and and sea lions that are not as jaded to tourists as the locals are. For as lumbering and inept as sea lions are on land they are the exact opposite in the water, and love to play with snorkelers. Their favorite game is chicken. They'd take a breath over 50 ft away and swim directly at someone only to discover at 15 ft that they were going to have to move because we humans are the oafish, ungraceful fools in the water. If someone was floating around it was also common for them to come up and nip at fingers, toes, or fins. It was always playful, like a dog, and it never hurt.

When we got to Galapagos Dave and I both thought it was rather unfortunate that neither one of us was certified to scuba-dive. We thought that being in the Galapagos with only a mask and snorkel was like driving a go cart in the Indy 500, playing the mouth harp in an orchestra, racing the Tour de France on a unicycle, performing a laser light show with a head lamp, sailing a Sunfish in the America's Cup, coming out of the gates at the Kentucky Derby on a rocking horse, or protecting a 'No Fly Zone' with a sling shot. Sorry about the Tom Robbins moment. As it turned out non-divers do miss out, but not much because of the high cost to scuba, also because there were still plenty of people that did not even get into the (albeit cold) water.

The biggest (and I do mean big) exception to that rule is the land tortoises. Decedents of the sea turtle millions of years ago, the land tortoise walked out of the water one day on a deserted island to never return. Whalers used to carry them back to their boats and put them in storage upside down where they could live, unable to flip back over, for over a year. It is speculated that they can live up to 400 years old (right-side up), but this is still a guess at this point. For as large and slow as they are they still get around quite well, and if they ever get tired, they can and do flop down and take a nap wherever.

One of the down sides to the Galapagos is because it is so famous, there are relatively few secrets left there to the casual observer (supposedly important discoveries are made there often, but again, interesting to the specialists in the field). This and the cost of the Galapagos are far higher than most backpackers are willing to pay. The park entrance fee is $100, and the rumor mill is putting out gossip saying that this cost may go up to $250 next year. As it is I spent around $900 to get there, lived for a week, and did something cool every day. Before getting to the Galapagos I had spend maybe $900 in the four weeks since leaving Panama. Darwin's theory of Natural Selection is also valid in economical situations. Many backpackers are selected not to go, and as costs go up the naturally selected are only going to become richer (read: whiter), and ironically not as able to share in all that the Galapagos has to offer as most of the older people were not scuba certified and did not spend much time in the water.

Galapagos is doubtlessly original, the Louvre of the biological world, its kind of ugly, and yet beautiful in its own way. The desert islands are surrounded on all sides by at least 100 km of water, the El Niño effect is just off shore of Ecuador yet the water is as cold as the Oregon Coast in places, penguins live here (on the equator!), animals are stuck on the hostile island terrain created by volcanoes. It is quite a set of contradictions and a dynamic history both before and since man has arrived. Despite no surprises, it should be a list of top five on the places to visit before dying.