Saturday, April 19

We awake anchored in Urvina Bay. This is a very pretty cove midway along Isabela Island’s western shore. Because of the heat, this morning’s excursion starts early at 7:30 AM. After going through the same breakfast drill of “there’s nothing for me to eat,” we grab our cameras and snorkeling gear and head to the main deck where people are lining up to board the pangas for the shore. It is just a short ride to our first “wet” landing. This landing is on a sandy beach crossed with turtle tracks and nest indentations where they have laid their eggs. We cache our snorkel gear and pick our way carefully through the maze of turtle nests up on to more solid ground – but it isn’t. All of the land around Urvina bay was formed only about fifty years ago when the sea floor was volcanically uplifted. This volcanic action has caused the top layers of the earth beneath us to be separated by air spaces. So if you stamp your foot on the ground, you hear a hollow thumping echo very similar to the floor echoes you may hear when walking heavily through your house. Also because of the recent formation of this land, it is very flat and lacks any significant sized trees. Instead, it appears all to be scrub about 15 feet high.

As we trudge through the hinterlands of the bay, we see many birds, including a number of Darwin’s famous finches and one rare cuckoo. The first sign of larger animals is in the form of iguana tracks and burrows. The tracks are distinctive because of the stripe traced by the iguana’s long trailing tail through its scrabbling footmarks. Their burrows are holes about 4 to 6 inches across dug into the ground. We try looking into a hole to get a feel for its depth but receive no reflection. Finally we come across some of their live occupants. One of the land iguanas is golden and the other green. Both lie quietly back in the underbrush, so clear views and pictures are hard to come by. But then we see the star attraction of the islands, a giant tortoise, and in the wild! (Most visitors to the Galápagos only see tortoises kept in “zoos” like the Charles Darwin Research Center.) This one is a juvenile come down from the slopes of the Alcedo volcano that hovers in the background. The largest collection of wild giant tortoises in the Galápagos make their home up in the crater of this volcano that dominates central Isabela Island. The juveniles are more footloose and wander more distantly. But to see the adults, you must embark on a two to three day roundtrip trek up to the volcano’s crater. Something to put away for our next visit.

Our guide Enrique (“Kiki”) also tells us about some of the vegetation that we pass. Among the most prevalent is a bush/tree that bears many bright yellow flowers. It is called a manzanillo or “poison apple” tree. The sap will irritate your skin, and the fruit, though a favorite of the tortoises, is very bad for humans.

As we return to the beach, we spy a flock of wild goats up on the hillside. These creatures are the bane of the Galápagos ecosystem. Introduced by sailors and settlers some years ago, they have steadily expanded their range, denuding all vegetation as they go. Their destructive habits are the biggest threat to the survival of the Islands’ tortoises. A program has been started to reduce their number, and in the ideal, to eliminate them altogether. The plan is this. Wardens capture a few of the goats and put radio transmitter collars on their necks. These goats are then released back into the wild at scattered locations. Because goats are herd animals, these beacon goats will soon commune with others in a flock. After giving the released goats a few days or weeks to meet up with their old buddies, hunters are sent out to home in on the radio signals that now will hopefully mark a whole bunch of goats to be liquidated. The theory is that the hunters will pick off a good number of the goats before the gunfire causes the rest of the herd to scatter. The hunters then retreat for a few days and allow the herds to re-form. The hunters track them down again, pick off a few more of them, and so on. According to Kiki, the problem with this plan became apparent the first time it was tried. The goats with the radio transmitters were released, a bit of time passed and the herds were then tracked. But when the hunters began shooting at the herd, the first goat to go down was the one wearing the radio collar. So the plan’s genius for cheap repetition was foiled. After this faux pas, all captured goats that were fitted with radio collars also had their horns painted a bright color to warn off shots from the hunters. I hope it works.

Back on the beach, we did some snorkeling along the rocks lining the sides of the cove. It wasn’t too interesting. The water was murky and there were only a few fish. The highlight was when a sea lion arrived to check out the human bathing activity in the cove. The kids were entertained by the sea lion’s curious expression as it cruised around, raising its whiskered face to inspect these strange furless swimmers. Other visual entertainment was provided by a very persistent pelican that put on a great display of fishing. It would repeatedly labor into the air, cruise over the bay, dive into the water, strain the water out of its pouch, gulp down whatever was left and then start the process all over again. It was tiring just to watch. As noon approached, we returned to the Santa Cruz.

It was during the walking this morning that I realized that my tooth no longer bothered me – and hadn’t done so for a least a day. Armed with this new piece of data, (i.e., that I didn’t have an infected tooth), I was able finally to reconstruct why the irritation of two days ago had occurred. On the drive to Newark airport and early on the plane ride to South America, I had been chewing a piece of gum. In my old age, I have found that vigorous chewing of a stiff wad of gum flexes my teeth, stretches the ligaments holding them in place and has caused me irritation in the past. But this irritation only becomes evident some hours after the chewing has occurred. But in my hypochondria to attribute the pain either to the worst reason for my sore tooth (infection) or to the most esoteric (altitude), I had forgotten the simplest – gum chewing. I had no more troubles for the rest of the trip and my stash of antibiotics and painkillers went unused. Hurray!

During lunch, the Santa Cruz motored further down the western coast of Isabela to our afternoon excursion location, Punta Moreno. This excursion was to be broken up into two parts: a panga ride along the rocks and into a tidal lagoon and a walk across a lava field to a salt pond where we might see flamingos. Because the walk would cross unstable and fissured shards of lava, it was not recommended for the older passengers – who would receive a longer panga ride.

As our panga approached the shoreline of Punta Moreno, we headed first for a rocky point that was being beaten and sprayed relentlessly by the surf. On this point were scattered penguins, sea lions, cormorants, blue footed boobies, marine iguanas and Sally Lightfoot crabs, all lounging around completely interspersed with one another. There was no territoriality, no “this spot is saved for my species,” just a mass of different animals sharing the same wet location.

Perhaps now is an opportune time to discuss photography. We have brought four types of cameras on this trip: (1) an old 35mm Pentax SLR equipped with its standard f1.7 50mm lens and an f4 70-200mm zoom lens, both lenses manual focus; (2) a small 2.1 megapixel Canon digital still camera with 2x optical zoom; (3) a Sony Digital8 video camera with 20x optical zoom; and (4) a couple of disposable 35mm underwater cameras. Not only is this a bit of a load to carry on each shore excursion, but the juggling act that must be done to keep all of these optical pieces in play (plus two pairs of binoculars) leaves little opportunity for direct eyeball sightseeing. It quickly became apparent that each of these cameras has particular strengths and weaknesses.

In a bouncing panga, the SLR is just too unwieldy, especially with the zoom lens. This is partially the result of a retrospectively unwise decision that I made concerning the type of film to bring with us. Based on guidebook recommendations that noted the fierce sun of the equator and the primitive airport X-ray machines in South America (X-rays inspection is more likely to fog high speed film than low speed film), I brought predominantly ASA 100 film. But given that a number of days were overcast and I often wanted to use the f4 telephoto lens rather than the faster f1.7 lens, this slow film caused the camera’s automatic shutter speed to drop into the 1/30 to 1/60 of a second range. Which is really too slow to get a sharp picture without the steadiest of camera platforms – a panga not being one of them. Given that all of the X-ray machines in Quito seemed to be of the same caliber that we see in the U.S. and my recurrent desire to use the optically strongest camera we had, I could have kicked myself for not bringing ASA 400 film. The increase in picture sharpness due to the faster shutter speed would have far out-weighed any increase in film grain.

But there is no way to swap out my 100 ASA stash of 16 rolls for higher speed film, and until the pictures are developed there is also no way to know how much the unsteady camera platforms would degrade the pictures, so this is what we have to work with. But as a result, I soon determined that from a panga, the video camera was the instrument of choice. The SLR would be used predominantly on shore, and the digital still camera could be used for snapshots anywhere. (All the photos that have been attached to this journal come from the digital camera.)

After cruising along the rocks, the panga entered a mangrove-surrounded tidal lagoon where the water was calm. The driver cut off the engine, and the panga coasted quietly. Soon we sighted several large sea turtles swimming through the water, a school of spotted eagle rays and a few small sharks. Evidently, this lagoon is a well-known spot for glimpsing this wildlife because we were soon joined by the panga carrying Mom and a number of other passengers. We were, thus, able to take pictures of one another from our separate boats. After a few more minutes of silent viewing, we motored out of the lagoon and to our landing point by the lava field.

The lava flow that we landed on lies between two of Isabela’s volcanoes, Sierra Negra and Cerro Azul. This flow was created by a relatively recent eruption – sometime about 300 to 400 years ago. Although this is within historic time for the Islands, visitors were sufficiently infrequent and the records they kept were sufficiently sparse, so no one knows the exact date. The lava here is a combination of what is called pahoehoe or “ropey” lava and aa or “broken” lava. (The received worldwide glossary for lava types comes from the Hawaiian language, where they are the acclaimed experts on lava.)

We then began a half mile hike over this lava flow to the salt pond. It was very much like walking over a field of broken crockery. Continual high-pitched squeaking and crunching of the surface underfoot. This field of broken lava is punctuated by small patches of more solid ropey lava, but more ominously, by numerous fissures with both sharp edges and a width adequate to swallow a small boy. And of course our boys were taking the hike like a playground obstacle course, not as a dangerous environment in which 911 doesn’t exist and any help is two days away. Thus, they were blithely seeking cracks to jump over, fragile lava points to stand on, etc. It was none too restful for their parents. But at least Jeffrey wisely chickened out when dared by his brother to jump over one crevice that was about three feet wide and at least ten feet deep. While you might say that jumping three feet from a running start is nothing for a small boy, you must remember that both the takeoff and landing “platforms” are themselves broken lava shards so that the footing is uncertain. And even if your jump is of adequate distance to land on the other side, if you do not successfully keep your footing, you are in for some nasty cuts from a roll on the lacerating lava.

As we reached the salt pond that was the goal of our hike, we are rewarded with the sight of two flamingos feeding at its distant end – and they are of the appropriate pink color. We spend about fifteen minutes sitting on a lava bluff above the pond watching the flamingos and bathing in the late afternoon light (it was about 5:30 PM). The light here is truly sensational. It is like the luminescent glow we receive just prior to a summer thunderstorm when the sun’s rays seem caught between the earth and the dark underside of the storm clouds. But here the effect is doubled. We have both dark clouds overhead and dark lava below. So only the intermediate points like the people, the pond and the vegetation around the pond are capable of reflecting light. You want to keep such a scene in a bottle forever.

We then prepared to leave the pond to return to the ship. Time was growing short. At the equator, when it reaches 6 PM, the sun drops precipitously below the horizon and there is very little twilight. But then a speck appeared in the sky beyond the pond. As it grew bigger, I recognized it as a flamingo in flight and pointed it out to the other onlookers. Flamingos fly in almost a straight horizontal plane. Their long neck stretches straight out in front, and their legs trail horizontally behind them. The bird glided circularly around the lake and lost altitude. As it reached the level of the water, its legs came down and began to windmill. The flamingo appears to run for ten or twenty meters along the pond’s surface until it finally alights. We broke into spontaneous applause at its performance. I believe even our guides Pierre and Lola were awed by this display. In the dying light, we walk quickly but carefully back to the shore, content with another deep experience to file away.

Our panga is the last to return to the ship. On the way back, we see a flock of Audubon’s shearwaters floating in the water. These little birds spend their entire life at sea. It seems harsh, but I guess they are used to it.

For dinner, the chef made pizza for the several kids on the cruise. Normally, this is a sure-thing meal for our kids, but Eric found something wrong with it, and didn’t eat any. They retired to our cabin along with two other boys to watch the Harry Potter DVD.

After dinner, I went up on deck for this evening’s stargazing. It is great. Rather than “holding” water as it does in the Northern Hemisphere, the Big Dipper faces downwards to point to Polaris – which cannot be seen below the horizon. Opposite the Big Dipper and over the South Pole is the Southern Cross. Truly a magnificent constellation that I have never before seen (you can’t see anything in the night sky from downtown São Paulo). And unlike in the northern hemisphere where you need to be an expert to locate the constellations of the Zodiac, here on the equator they span the sky from east to west. These constellations start from the horizon midway between the Southern Cross and the Big Dipper and march directly over your head and down to the equator on the other side. Just beautiful – especially because the nearest artificial lights are a hundred miles away.

So ends another spectacular day.

Sea turtle tracks at Urvina Bay	Wet landing at Urvina Bay
Richard and Mom – Urvina Bay	Poison Apple (manzanillo) – Urvina Bay
Penguins – Punta Moreno	Richard and Sierra Negra – Punta Moreno
Eric and Jeffrey at salt pond– Punta Moreno	Eric, Jeffrey and Richard – Punta Moreno