Ecuador – The Galapagos – a wonderful symbiotic relationship

The second week we stay in a B& B come hostel called the Galeta Iguana, with a kitchen where we can prepare picnic meals. Carlos greets us warmly when we arrive. It’s close proximity to the sea and the beach, which means that at high tide, the sea ferociously laps the wall sides of the back terrace, threateningly close, where the hammocks hang. At low tide, It looks out on the best beach I have ever seen. Perfect white sand, good  safe for children surf waves, not a building, umbrella, beach vendor, or coconut for sale in sight. Mark and the children hire body boards, I daren’t.  Iguanas gather here in their dozens to sun their backs in the sun, and we have to step over them to get to our room. We also happen to be next to the second coolest bar ever in my life, a sandy alfresco bar just off the beach, hammocks, volley ball, and a slack line, where we spend our evenings. A place where the island converges at sun down, surfers come with their boards under their arms for a margarita or a beer at happy hour and cool music plays, making you wish you were thirty years younger.

The price of tours to get to see wildlife is extortionate here, but we as we have come all this way to see it, we will have to splash out. So we decide to choose one out of dozens of day tours. We opt for the “tunnels tour”, which involves getting geared up for snorkelling and heading off in a speed boat to another part of the island. Sandwiches and watermelon are thrown in for lunch. We jump out of the boat into the warm black waters amongst extraordinary lava formations. Millie and me hold hands, and off we swim, face downwards,  ooing and aaaing when anything drifts past us. There are beautiful striped fish, big and small,  then turtles, a baby with its gorgeous, shades of brown shell. Then 2 adults , enormous, bigger than Mark drifting by. “Don’t touch the animals” our guide warns us. Very tricky when it’s swimming towards to you, it’s face a few feet away from you, and you can’t reverse very easily with flippers on and I am holding Millie’s hand. Next, we see sharks – three of them sleeping in an underwater cave. In order to see them you have to duck your head under the tunnel to get out of the light, and then suddenly , like those 3-D pictures, the picture suddenly emerges, and there they are lying there looking at you, not menacing, just calm and strangely beautiful. “DANGER” “JAWS” “MAN EATING” were all the signals my brain is telling me and yet I didn’t feel at all afraid, entirely believing the guide that Galapagos sharks don’t eat humans! And then a sea horse, sweetly smiling at us, bobbing amongst the seaweed and tiny penguins sitting on the rocks. This has been a good day.

Then on land, we walk across black volcanic lava and cactus trees to spot blue-footed boobies doing their mating dance. The male lifts one foot high, then the other, and flexes his wings, while his would be mate looks on nonchalantly, seeming not to notice. He whistles, she quacks, this goes on for a while and it’s happening everywhere we look, this duo dance. Then, just as we are about to get back into the boat, a baby seal lures Jemima and Gabriel back in to the water for swims and somersaults, delighting us all with its lunges and twirls.

The next day I am lucky enough to spot a fever of 6 black manta rays while snorkelling in the lagoon at the harbour. I am mesmerised by the sheer beauty of them floating in these silent waters, though when I approach them, they silently disappear. With no-one else around to witness them with me,  will anyone believe me?

My great grandfather, the Welshman Captain John Howell, was a seafaring man. He trawled Guano (Birdshit)  from the Galapagos, to be used as fertiliser, back in the day, up and down the coast of South America. Here on a tiny rock, in these dark waters, live a population of frigate birds. The rich properties of the bird poo (guano) feeds the algae, helping it to grow, which in turn feeds the fish, which feeds the frigates and thus the cycle continues – a wonderful symbiotic relationship.  

I notice curiously on an old map of The Galapagos that a rock off the coast of San Cristobal is called Dalrymple Rock. Now I am intrigued!

At the airport on our way back to Guayaquil, we hear from fellow Canadian travellers, the devastating news about the earthquake in Nepal. We are stunned and worried about our lovely friend and guide Karma.