As an add-on to Allie’s 8th grade class trip to Argentina, Allie and I visited Jill and her family in the Galapagos.
Thursday, June 20 – Guayaquil to Galapagos
We decided to go to the Galapagos primarily to visit my niece, Jill Blythe. Jill had moved to the Galapagos in 2007, initially as a volunteer English teacher for three months. She loved it in the Galapagos and figured out how to extend her job teaching English teaching, supplementing it by nannying (au pairing?) the children of the town’s mayor. I found two of her old blogs, one from the Galapagos in 2007-2008, the other from travels in Peru, some with Susanna in 2006-2007. It looks like she started teaching English in Peru in 2006 then shifted to the Galapagos in March 2007 where she started teaching English at the high school. She lived in the home of the mayor for the first three months and I think that led to her staying as an au pair. By early 2008 she met Javier Moreno (“her favorite dive master”), an Ecuadorian native whose family lived on Santa Cruz. Jill and Javier became an item, moved in together and got married in March 2008. They later held a proper ceremony for family in December of 2008.
Jill eagerly invited anyone and everyone to visit the Galapagos and we were happy to take her up on the offer at the tail end of Allie’s class trip. We coordinated all of our travel plans with Jill, starting in November 2007 when we first learned about the potential for Allie’s Argentina trip. We quickly decided that we would prefer to stay in a hotel on Santa Cruz and let Jill be our tour guide rather than be on a cruise to multiple islands. Jill recommended the Red Mangrove and connected us with a friend of hers who helped coordinate flights and travel arrangements. By January we had the flights and hotel set. We left the actual day-to-day plans until we got to see Jill and Javier in the Galapagos.
Allie and I caught a 9:15 am flight from Guayaquil which meant being at the airport bright and early, so we can’t say we saw much of Guayaquil other than the block immediately around our hotel, and the KFC where I found dinner the night before. Some other time, Guayaquil.
We flew into Seymour Airport on Baltra, a small island just north of the main island of Santa Cruz. Javier met us at the airport and helped usher us through baggage claim then onto a small ferry boat that shuttled us over to Santa Cruz.
Javier helped get us settled into our hotel, the Red Mangrove (now renamed the Galapagos Habitat). It was a small, somewhat older hotel with a nice bar and restaurant on the water near the harbor of Puerto Ayora. Our room was in a small building near the bar; it was comfortable but not luxurious — a reasonable choice for Allie and me but I was glad Barb was not with us. I don’t think she would have been especially happy there.
Jill met us at the hotel and took us to our first stop, the Charles Darwin Research Station a short walk from the hotel. We got a guided tour of the facility, learning about efforts to preserve the islands’ fragile ecology and wildlife. We saw the resident celebrity, Lonesome George, a century-old tortoise alleged to be the last of his kind and therefore the “rarest creature in the world.” He indeed looked mighty old and lonely; he finally passed away in 2012.
We climbed to a rooftop viewing area at the Research Station and had a look around. We were in Puerto Ayora, the main town on Santa Cruz, home to the bulk of the 15,000 or so people on the island. The island was a little drier with more cactus than I expected, greener than Aruba but not by much.
This seemed like an appropriate time for some photos of each other. It was great being with Jill.
Allie was very eager to get into the water even though it was late and there wasn’t much of a beach nearby. Jill pointed us to the closest location and Allie took a quick dip before dinner. This was my first time so close to the equator — I didn’t realize that sunrise is always around 6am and sunset around 6pm, no matter the month or season. June is generally the start of cooler, drier months in the Galapagos marked by the garua, a cool misty fog that often shrouds the highlands. The cool water of the Humboldt current moderates the air temperature keeping things comfortable but the water was a little chilly for swimming.
For our first dinner, we joined Jill and Javier at one of the restaurants in Puerto Ayora where we had ceviche and other seafood delicacies paired with plenty of margaritas. A fine introduction to Galapagos cuisine.
Friday, June 21 – Santa Cruz
I think the deal this day was that Jill had to work part of the day so we hung out at the hotel, had a leisurely breakfast and enjoyed seeing the wildlife that made themselves at home right around the hotel.
In the afternoon, Jill joined us along with Javier’s niece Michaela. We walked a fairly long way (more than a mile) to the beach at Tortuga Bay (Wikipedia, Galapagos Alternative). The paved path through the mangroves got mighty hot and humid but once we made it to the beach it was worth it. There are actually two beaches — a beautiful but exposed beach with rough water and a more secluded and calmer lagoon that was better for swimming. Allie and Michaela became good buddies right away.
Allie and Michaela did some swimming and snorkeling at the lagoon beach. I mostly stayed in the shade. The lagoon beach had a big population of sea iguanas, a unique creature only found in the Galapagos. They swim and feed in the ocean, then laze about in the sun trying to rest and raise their body temperature after spending time in the cool water. They had an unfortunate habit of snorting snotty jets of salt water out their noses while they were resting and frankly clumps of the iguanas together were mighty stinky. But they were interesting to observe from a distance.
Saturday, June 22 – North Seymour Island
Jill and Javier arranged for Allie and I to take an excursion to North Seymour Island, a small sanctuary just north of the airport. We joined a small group of other tourists for a van ride across Santa Cruz to catch a boat at the same harbor where we ferried from the airport. This gave us a chance to have a closer look at the highlands of Santa Cruz as we passed. It was easier to notice the microclimates as we climbed over the spine of this volcanic island. It was similar to driving in Maui or Hawaii (though not as lush), greener and cooler at altitudes that caught moisture from the clouds, then descending through warmer, more cactus-laden dry landscapes on the north side of the island.
We got to the harbor and boarded a nice boat for our short ride past Baltra and the airport to North Seymour. There were only five or six other folks with us, making a nice small group. Even on this short ride we encountered wildlife along the way.
We took our boat’s small launch to land on North Seymour, then followed our guide on a path (of sorts) that only he could see. We immediately started walking through a colony of blue footed boobies nesting, some with eggs. The birds were at once elegant with their blue feet and a little goofy looking. They were remarkably unperturbed by having us walk among them. We could walk right up to them though we were cautioned not to get too close or disturb them. We snapped quite a few pictures…they were very photogenic.
We walked a bit further and came upon a colony of frigate birds, actually Magnificent Frigatebirds, I learned. Going back to the days when I fished with my Dad, frigate birds were always what we looked for to guide us toward fish. I loved spotting them gliding through the sky — more than I enjoyed actually catching fish. This nesting colony included a number of males with their distinctive red pouches. I had only ever seen pictures of them with their pouches puffed out — they don’t do it when they’re scouting for fish. I’d also never seen their fluffy white babies, nor did I realize that juveniles had a white head.
The frigates were not quite as friendly or nonplussed as the boobies, plus they nested in trees rather than on the ground. We couldn’t get as close to the frigates as we could to the boobies, but they were impressive nonetheless.
We saw more than boobies and frigates on North Seymour. There were also iguanas (the land version), pelicans and a particularly chatty sea lion.
On the dinghy ride back to our boat we also saw a good sized shark patrolling the water, just in case we fell in.
After several hours on North Seymour, our excursion went to an isolated beach on the north side of Santa Cruz for a picnic lunch. It seemed like a fine idea, and the beach was lovely…but it turned out to be infested with aggressively biting horseflies. There was no shade or comfortable place to sit on the beach, and the only way to avoid the horseflies was to bob in the water as submerged as possible. It was fun for a few minutes but got old pretty quickly. Allie and I snorkeled for a bit and tried using our underwater camera but the water was a little murky and the photos came out crappy anyway. I was happy to get back to the boat.
Our excursion concluded with a long, somewhat wet return drive across Santa Cruz to Puerto Ayora. Later, we joined Jill and Javier with some of their friends for dinner. We recounted our adventures over more ceviche and margaritas. I was impressed with the variety of ceviches available with different seafood and spice levels. Mom and Dad used to fix ceviche but I thought there was just the one way to do it. It turns out there are lots of delicious varieties.
Sunday, June 23 – Floreana Island
For this day, Javier and Jill arranged a boat to take us and a few others on an excursion to Floreana Island. Floreana lies about 30 miles due south of Puerto Ayora, a lesson in just how spread out the Galapagos Islands actually are. Our boat was a pretty speedy one but it still took nearly two hours of bucking across the choppy ocean to get there. There weren’t many good places to sit on the boat without bouncing hard on one’s tailbone with each crash on the waves, so I and the others ended up standing with bent knees and a death grip tight hold on some stable part of the boat to keep from bouncing out. It was a tough, exhausting ride against the wind and waves. Jill and Javier said it was a little worse than usual but seemed to think nothing of it.
We finally arrived at the now mostly uninhabited island where Javier kicked into tour guide mode. Our moods improved greatly once we were ashore, greeted by a welcome committee of sea lions on the dock.
Javier led the way inland to a reserve for Galapagos tortoises. This was our best chance to see a bunch of young, healthy tortoise munching happily on their midday meal. It was good to see them looking well cared for.
Javier then led us on a climb to an old settlement where he recounted several stories of Floreana. One was the story of the whaler’s post office, a tradition started in the late 1700s where whalers would leave letters in a barrel at Post Office Bay. Other whalers or passing ships would sort through the letters and deliver ones to their destinations if that was where they were going. We didn’t actually stop at Post Office Bay or see the barrel, but I always liked the story.
Javier also recounted the convoluted story of three famous “couples” that made Floreana home in the 1930s and 40s: Dore Strauch and Friedrich Ritter arrived in 1929, followed by the Wittmer family in 1932, and later that year by Baroness Eloise Wehrborn de Wagner-Bosquet with two German lovers/companions, Robert Philippson and Rudolph Lorenz, and Ecuadorian guide Manuel Valdivieso Borja. The maneuverings between them became known as The Galapagos Affair, or the Floreana Affair (podcast), the subject of a 2013 film (Wikipedia, NY Times review) and well speculated upon by others (example, example) though there’s no definitive resolution to the mysteries involved. It makes for an intriguing story, a cautionary tale of misfits trying to carve their own visions of paradise. Javier led us to the spring and rock formations at Asilo de la Paz that were home to pirates a century before Dore and Friederich and then the Wittmers until they each built their own shelters.
After getting our dose of these local legends and the view, we headed back down the hillside to the dock and our waiting sea lion friends. We boarded the boat to find a spot to do some snorkeling.
Heading out, Javier spotted a few Galapagos penguins on the rocks. We tried to get close but they were pretty elusive and camera shy. The rocking of the boat didn’t make things any easier. This was the only time we saw them.
We motored a way along the shoreline of Floreana until Javier decided it was time to stop and snorkel. He anchored while we squished our way into wetsuits and hopped in. The water was cool and reasonably clear, and the fish were abundant.
The real miracle were the sea lions. They played and swam among us as if we were all friends. They seemed to love showing off their swimming skills, especially compared to us lumbering oafs. They were beautiful and remarkable. It was magical spending some time with them in their habitat.
I had a feeling our underwater camera photos would not do the sea lions justice so I bought this photograph from a professional’s shop in Puerto Ayora the next day. I wanted to better capture the memory of swimming with these magnificent creatures. I’m glad I did.
The ride back to Santa Cruz with the wind and waves in our favor was fortunately much easier and smoother. It was still a long two hours back but the day had been excellent. I greatly appreciated Jill and Javier taking the time to show us this corner of the Galapagos.
Monday, June 24 – Santa Cruz Highlands
Our last day in the Galapagos was focused on a tour of sights in the Santa Cruz highlands. Jill and Javier were again our guides as they showed us around several areas that were important to them and the lives they planned on the island.
The day started with a visit from a friendly pelican while we had breakfast at the hotel. I’m not quite sure why I took four photos but here they are, his (or her) moment of fame.
Javier drove us and two other couples in a caravan up the slopes of Santa Cruz. I can’t remember the specific connection to the two couples but there was one…Javier and Jill have many friends on the islands for many reasons. The garua mist was in full force, not quite raining but definitely wet. Our first stop was at a sugar cane field where Javier gave us a taste of fresh cane juice. He said that he had worked in the cane fields some as a youth so he knew the drill well. The fresh can juice was tasty but very sweet; I didn’t want very much of it. I prefer the cane’s eventual result: rum.
Next we stopped at a nursery for coffee plants that Jill and Javier were growing to turn into a boutique line of coffee beans. They had plans to cultivate several acres and sell the roasted beans to tourists and friends. I think they were somewhat successful with this venture for several seasons but I also think it eventually became more work than it was worth.
Jill and Javier were at this point newly married and had a variety of schemes and plans in mind. Their main plan was to start a tour company, Galapagos Alternative. They also had the coffee idea and hoped to open a set of B&B/bungalows for tourists to rent in the highlands. Javier had access to some acres of land in the highlands through his family. Galapagos Alternative quickly grew into a successful venture, largely on the strength of hard work by Javier and Jill, their U.S. counterpart, Susanna, and a shifting network of fellow guides and subcontractors. From the start, the venture gained overwhelmingly excellent TripAdvisor reviews and word of mouth. The tours ended up taking most of their time. I don’t think they’re in the coffee business anymore, nor did the bungalows get off the ground. But they ended up building a happy life together for more than a decade, had two lovely girls, Elia (born in 2011) and Maia (born in 2018), and remain business partners even though Jill and Javier divorced in 2020 (I think).
We next went to a farm/tourist facility that I think was operated by one of Javier’s brothers or other family members to see some free ranging tortoises. There was a sort of meeting space where we could learn a bit about the tortoises, then we went into the fields to find the tortoises which wasn’t difficult. These were proper giant tortoises, considerably bigger than the ones we saw on Floreana, and it was easier to get close for pictures though we were still instructed not to touch or get too close. It was very impressive to see these tortoises moving about, peacefully munching the grass, contemplating the prospect of living a century or more. Nobody knows the troubles they’ve seen.
We went to a lava tube nearby and walked the spooky length of it. I still don’t quite understand the tourist fascination with lava tubes. But they are an attraction and again there was some connection to Javier’s family and/or they were in proximity to the family land.
We ended our highland tour with a stop at a very nice, modern hotel, the Royal Palm Galapagos. This was a facility that Barb might like to stay at, but it was a long way from anywhere.
Tuesday, June 25 – Heading Home
Time to fly home. We bid farewell to Jill and Javier and caught flights back to Guayaquil, Miami and home.
It was, in all, an excellent and eye-opening journey. While I was greatly impressed by the Galapagos and fully supportive of Jill and Javier building a life there, I was also deeply ambivalent about the impact humans have already had and will continue to have on the islands and their fragile ecosystems. Even more than when I’ve been in Hawaii, I got the sense that these were incredibly delicate, unique islands that could not bear much human traffic, certainly not from rich, ignorant/arrogant, oafish tourists like myself. People like me with my desires for modern amenities and comforts are a profound mismatch for the islands. I can’t recall leaving a place with a stronger feeling of not belonging — this was not a place I was meant to be, mainly because too many people like me would quickly spoil it.
Jill made it clear that there was a lot more of the Galapagos to see, especially Isabella island with its volcanoes and varied landscapes and animals. She eagerly invited us back and hoped that Barb might come. I don’t think that’s likely, though I’d encourage Allie to go see and experience more, especially to take advantage of Jill’s connection and experience for however long she’s there. Maybe there’s a trip to Ecuador and Peru under Jill’s guidance in my future, and if I do that I might go back to the Galapagos as well. But as things stand, I feel incredibly lucky to have gone and seen what saw, and feel like the world will be in better balance if I stay away. Folks like Jill and Javier are likely very good stewards of the treasures of the Galapagos and I hope they earn a healthy and happy livelihood from showing it to others. I gladly cede my spot in line to other folks to see the wonders of the Galapagos.
There’s an obvious tension over the role of tourism in islands like the Galapagos, Hawaii, Aruba or the Dominican Republic, to mention a few places where I have some recent familiarity. These are each special places in their own rights, with the Galapagos and Hawaii being at the higher end of special if only for their remoteness and unique species and habitats. I get at least some sense that tourism is a better controlled and recognized evil/opportunity in Hawaii. While some areas are overbuilt and spoiled, I feel like there is a recognition that things went too far in some cases and there are strong efforts to protect what’s left and revive what they can. Aruba has wholly given itself over to tourism and fat, indolent folks like me but honestly there wasn’t a whole lot of local culture or ecosystem there to begin with, or at least not 60 years ago when I was growing up there. Let it be a magnet for tourist dollars and global visitors. The Dominican Republic is somewhere in between. The all-inclusive resorts are little fortresses of exclusivity that have little interaction with “real” Dominican life. The balance is not right, but I feel like maybe there’s a reasonable quid-pro-quo when I land in Punta Cana and get shuttled to an enclave to spend money and stay behind the walls. I think the difference is when tourists are paying basically for sunshine and a pool/beach, you can designate some areas for tourists, soak some money from them and still retain the rest of the island for the island’s people and nature. When the tourists are paying to see “nature” like in the Galapagos, it’s hard to designate where the tourist areas stop and nature reigns. As more tourists arrive, nature quickly loses.
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