Absolutely
GalÁpagos
David Fletcher
Copyright © 2017 David Fletcher
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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For Caroline
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By the same author:
2016
1.
The Hilton Colon Hotel in Quito wasn’t anything like its name might suggest. In fact, it was very pleasant indeed, and the only thing that was crappy was Brian’s knowledge of Spanish. Sandra’s was better, and it was she who pointed out to Brian that the Spanish version of the anglicised ‘Christopher Columbus’ is, of course, ‘Cristóbal Colón’, and that for their two-night stop in Quito, prior to their travelling to the Galápagos archipelago, they had been installed in the Hilton Columbus Hotel. This revelation brought embarrassment and relief to Brian in almost equal measure, but he also knew that from now on, however hard he tried, he would never be able to contemplate a certain hidden body part – and a certain not very desirable medical procedure – without also bringing to mind that famous explorer from the past. It was just the way he was and he could do nothing about it.
Anyway, it was now the evening of their second day in the Colon Hotel, and Brian and Sandra were in bed, both eager to shed the remains of their jet lag and so be in tip-top form for their journey tomorrow. Because tomorrow would see them flying off to their Galápagos destination, and there embarking on a two-week voyage around its ‘enchanted isles’. However, Sandra was still wide awake, and was now reading a book, and Brian was still wide awake – and reviewing their experiences so far.
These had kicked off yesterday when they had flown into Quito in the late afternoon (Quito time), and had thereafter just managed some alcoholic resuscitation before succumbing to sleep. Their experiences then recommenced about twelve hours later in the form of a city tour in the company of their fellow ‘Nature-seekers’, a dozen other souls who, like themselves, had booked a comprehensive circumnavigation of the Galápagos Islands – and did not necessarily have an intense interest in Spanish colonial architecture. Even if, in Quito, it was so good and so well preserved that it constituted a World Heritage Site. And quite right too. It was pretty impressive, albeit that under a clear blue sky (and at an altitude of 9,000ft), walking around it did entail a perilous exposure of certain sparsely covered scalps to the attention of an unrelenting tropical sun. Furthermore, there was also an exposure to the rather heavy-handed history of Catholicism in this land, probably at its worst in the gold-embellished interior of the Iglesia de la Compañia de Jesús, a ‘house of God’ that, despite God’s inclusive credentials, had originally been out of bounds to all but the upper-crustiest of Quito’s very Spanish establishment.
Understandably – at least from Brian’s perspective – it was something of a relief to abandon the cultural delights of the city in favour of its concentrated natural delights, in the form of Quito’s botanical gardens. Here was spent a pleasurable afternoon looking at all things botanical (and especially at a collection of orchids that must rank amongst the best in the world) – as well as witnessing nature in the raw. This episode of rawness was in the shape of a large blue wasp dragging off an enormous (paralysed) spider to its burrow, there presumably to use it as a living larder for its larvae, and in this way illustrate not the inclusive nature of God but his/her/its indifference to all forms of cruelty and suffering.
It was at this stage of his musings – when Brian realised that he’d been sidetracked into ‘philosophy’ – that he decided to abandon his brief review of his and Sandra’s time in Quito, and instead turn his attention to where they would soon be going. Yes, it was time to give some considered thought to the Galápagos Islands, and to start with, how they had come about – in geological terms.
Well, the first thing to bear in mind, he remembered, was that the Galápagos Islands had never been part of the South American continent. They sit about 1,000 kilometres off its coast, but they and the continent have never even been introduced to each other, let alone been joined in any way. This, of course, is because they are the result of volcanic activity and are largely the tips of vast submarine volcanoes – together with the occasional slab of basaltic rock uplifted from the ocean floor.
But that is to gloss over their genesis, and Brian thought that such is the remarkable nature of this genesis, that it warranted a rather more detailed exposition, starting with the fact that the Galápagos Islands are located at the ‘Galápagos Triple Junction’. This is nothing to do with some double bifurcation of the East Coast Mainline outside Banbury, but all to do with the confluence of three of the Earth’s tectonic plates: the Pacific Plate, the Cocos Plate and the Nazca Plate. Now, as all those who have not been subjected to the worst of faith schooling will know, tectonic plates are huge slabs of the Earth’s crust that are floating on a bed of liquid rock – or magma. Well, at the Galápagos Triple Junction, the Nazca Plate is on the move – east/south-eastwards – at a rate of just two centimetres a year (meaning that in Brian’s lifetime it had shifted east/south-east by a distance equivalent to just the length of his chest-waders – if one ignored the shoulder straps). However, as well as this movement – and intimately associated with it – there is a lot of heat. And this is because below the northern edge of the Nazca Plate is a ‘hotspot’. Nothing to do with Galápagos night-life but everything to do with a point in the Earth’s crust where the superheated magma beneath it is able to pierce its way through – and, in doing so, form massive volcanoes.
Right. Well, this hotspot is stationary. The ‘mantle plume’ that causes it is a fixed point in the Earth. So… if the plate above it is moving east/south-eastwards – albeit very slowly – then it follows that the volcanic islands created on it will themselves move – west/north-westwards – on a sort of geological ‘conveyer belt’. And this is exactly what is observed. (Although, as a human observer, you would be hard put to notice any movement, given that mere chest-waders-length shift in a lifetime.)
What can be observed, however, is that, of all the islands making up the present-day Galápagos Islands, those in the east are the oldest and those in the west the youngest. So, the south-eastern-most island, Española, is the great granddaddy of the ensemble, whereas Fernandina, to the west, is the real whippersnapper
of the group at just 700,000 years old. So… to reinforce this location and age connection – in Brian’s tired mind – we have a collection of islands that began to be formed possibly eight million years ago (and are still being formed), where the more east they are the older they are, and the more distant they are from volcanic activity the more eroded they are. In fact, the old hotspot has probably been at it a lot longer than eight million years, with evidence in the form of undersea mountains and ridges to the east of the existing islands, which indicate that it may have been pushing out volcanic material for as much as the last ninety million years. That is to say, that ‘lost’ Galápagos islands emerged much earlier than those that still exist, and were then either eroded away entirely or found themselves underwater through the action of a (still observable) sagging in the Earth’s crust. And although it will take an interminably long time, the same fate awaits even those young thrusting islands to the west – such as Fernandina – whose presently sharply defined features will one day be smoothed down and then submerged beneath the waves.
At this point, Brian had a thought. And his thought was that if this hotspot kept up the good work for a few more hundreds of millions of years, the westward drift of the (above-water) Galápagos islands would eventually see them turning up in somewhere like Borneo. Or if they drifted off slightly southwards, then maybe they’d end up somewhere between Brisbane and Cairns, having first breached the Great Barrier Reef and the Australians’ confidence in their border controls. Or maybe, there again, the situation and action of other tectonic plates, of which Brian had no knowledge whatsoever, might just scupper that outcome, and the Galápagos might instead simply end up going around in circles – as he often did when he was jet-lagged but not quite tired enough to sleep.
Yes, perhaps it was time to abandon the challenge of geology and all that scientific sort of thinking, and focus instead on the history of the Galápagos Islands. And first their pre-human history, and in particular how exuded molten rock in the middle of an ocean can possibly end up with any form of life on it, especially when it is so remote from any established landmass.
Well, the short answer is, with the help of ocean currents, a constantly restless atmosphere, birds and rafts of vegetation. The longer answer is… well, longer, and it requires, thought Brian, a distinction between the islands’ flora and their fauna – and, to start with, a consideration of how the first plants managed to arrive and then survive in such an unpromising environment as a field of bare lava.
Fortunately, this is far from being a real mystery, because the process is still extant and it can be observed on the very young islands. For here, on what are really little more than expanses of cooled, barren lava, can be seen such pioneering plants as cacti, which, when given the time and just enough precipitation, will ultimately create the right conditions to allow other plants to thrive. And these plants, like those original pioneers, will have arrived on these essentially sterile islands as just tiny seeds, either carried by the sea or the wind – or stuck to the feet or feathers of birds – or even deposited in their droppings. The result: the creation of a mix of environments within which fauna can then make a home.
Now, this process is a little more difficult. Because, although birds can fly and can either arrive in the Galápagos intentionally or, by being blown off course, accidentally, most other animals can definitely not fly and neither can they do 1,000 kilometres of breaststroke, even with the aid of inflatable armbands. So how the heck did they turn up?
Well, the answer is to be found in mainland South America, where, even now, during the wet season, huge clumps of vegetation and whole trees are ripped from the banks of rivers in flood and washed out to sea – in the general direction of the Galápagos Islands. Needless to say, the invertebrates and the small mammals and reptiles who together were just minding their own business in this riverside flora – but who now find themselves pressganged into maritime service – can only hang on desperately and hope. Yes, they can hope that their vessel is one of that tiny minority that doesn’t sink or break up and that eventually, after a somewhat challenging voyage, manages to cast them up on a no less challenging Galápagos shore. Of course, very few of these rafts of vegetation would have done this. But enough would to constitute the basis for what we observe as the distinctive – and varied – Galápagos wildlife of today.
Of course, this raft process would be just a little bit selective. Certain creepy-crawlies could survive such a crossing, and certain rodents and reptiles could just about cope with the inevitable dehydration and starvation. But no way could any amphibians have joined the party. Neither could giant tortoises, come to that. But in their case they probably arrived as much smaller species and may even have floated to the Galápagos Islands on their backs – either as a dare or as an act of rebellion while they were still very young. That said, they wouldn’t have been small enough to achieve this dare/act of rebellion by drifting through the air – on their backs or otherwise. That option was only open to critters such as spider hatchlings and various absolutely minute insects that together drift constantly on air currents thousands of metres in the air and can end up landing on any piece of the planet, including the Galápagos archipelago. Then, of course, there are bats, kept awake by incessant fiestas on mainland South America, and looking for somewhere quieter to live…
Umm, Brian was clearly getting more tired – and more ‘fanciful’ by the minute, a fact he confirmed by trying to imagine himself as one of those early reptiles or mammals who had endured an extended nightmare at sea, only to discover that he or she had made it to the safety of a great lump of rock. And on this rock are none of those delicacies one used to enjoy so much at home – like earthworms, avocadoes, roaches and flies – and one is either going to have to learn to eat lichen or risk a faceful of cactus spines every friggin’ day. And then there’s the threat of sunstroke, to say nothing of the likelihood of clinical depression…
OK. That, decided Brian, was enough of the natural history of the Galápagos – for now. Maybe, as a preparation for some much needed sleep, he should instead turn his diminishing attention to its human history. This had the advantage of being short, fairly uncomplicated and marginally interesting – when compared to the activities of those pioneering cacti.
It began in 1535, when the Bishop of Panama, one Fray Tomás de Berlanga, was on his way to Peru to arbitrate some dispute (maybe involving what tonnage of gold was required in the building of a new church?) and he got blown off course. That is to say, his ship got blown off course, not the bishop in his capacious vestments – or, at least, as far as is known. Anyway, when he finally made it back to his Spanish homeland, he reported on the conditions he found on the islands and on some of the animals there. What he didn’t report, because it wasn’t discovered until much later, was that the islands did contain evidence of earlier visits – by indigenous South Americans – in the form of various artefacts. But none of these artefacts included ceremonial vessels and there were no graves anywhere, which strongly suggested that there were never any permanent settlements on the islands. Those early South American visitors must have been just tourists or people out and about looking for a new picnic site – or, more likely, they were well on their way to a watery and distinctly terminal end somewhere in the endless Pacific.
So, King Carlos of Spain was informed that he had yet more real estate, but, from what Brian could remember, he seemed to be entirely underwhelmed, and his new property got filed away under ‘boring’ and was essentially ignored entirely. Indeed, it wasn’t until 1570 that the islands were included on any map – when they were (separately) by the two Flemish mapmakers, Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius. They were named ‘Insulae de los Galopegos (Islands of the Tortoises) in reference to the giant tortoises that were found there. (They were not, incidentally, named after ‘saddles’. The Spanish for ‘saddle’ is ‘silla de montar’, and the erroneous attribution of the islands’ name (to sa
ddles) arises because there used to be a form of saddle in Spain called a ‘galapagos’ – in reference to its tortoise shape. And if Brian could get his head around that distinction in his still jet-lagged, weary state, then surely, he thought, everybody else should be able to as well.)
He then thought he should move on to when the first English sea captain, a certain Richard Hawkins, visited the Galápagos – which was in 1593. Because this marked the first active human use of these islands, which was as a refuge for English pirates. Yes, rather than being exploited by the Spanish, they were used by their sworn enemies to conduct a drawn-out pilfering campaign on all those Spanish galleons carrying gold and silver out of South America and off to their homeland.
This English tenancy even extended to the drawing up of accurate navigation charts of the islands. This was done by a guy called James Colnett, who was an officer in the Royal Navy, with a sideline as a maritime fur trader. In fact, he was really bad news – for the wildlife of the Galápagos. This was because he was the first to suggest that the Galápagos would make a wonderful base for whaling in the Pacific, and in due course the whalers came – and killed and captured thousands of tortoises for consumption and for their fat. Then fur-seal hunters arrived and made matters even worse. So much so that the population of tortoises was greatly diminished and certain of their species were eliminated entirely.
Well, this horrible history must have made the arrival of the first human resident on the Galápagos Islands something of a relief for the local fauna – in that he was on his own. This chap was not Spanish and nor was he English. He was, in fact, Irish. He was a fellow by the name of Patrick Watkins and he was a sailor by profession who, by accident, had found himself marooned on one of the Galápagos islands called Floreana. He managed to survive there for two years – between 1807 and 1809 – and he did this by hunting, growing his own veg and trading with visiting whalers. He was clearly a resourceful sort of chap, and he was even able to bring his one-man colonisation of the islands to an end by stealing an open boat from one of the whaling ships and navigating himself back to the South American mainland. There, he probably swore never to go near any tectonic plate boundary ever again, and certainly not one that was associated with an all too active hotspot.
Absolutely Galápagos Page 1