Absolutely Galápagos

by David Fletcher

  OK. Brian now moved on – to 1832, which was when Ecuador finally got around to annexing the Galápagos Islands and finally restoring that original connection with the Spanish Empire – in a way, at least. The first governor of the islands was a fellow called General José de Villamil, who took over from where Mr Watkins had first made a mark, by, in 1832, taking a group of convicts to Floreana who were joined later that same year by a group of farmers and artisans. However, their venture there cannot, in all honesty, be said to have made the same impact as a brief visit made just three years later – by yet more Englishmen, this time in a ship called the Beagle…

  Yes, on 15 September 1835, the Beagle arrived to survey approaches to natural harbours. The captain of the ship (and one Charles Darwin), as well as conducting this survey work, made observations on the geology and the biology of a number of the Galápagos islands before they left on 20 October. They were assisted in these observations by the acting governor of the Galápagos at the time, and when this chap met the Beagle people (on what was then not yet Floreana but Charles Island), he happened to mention to Charles Darwin that the giant tortoises varied in appearance from island to island. With this pointer and with his own observations of mockingbirds, which he’d noticed also varied from island to island, our Charles, towards the end of the Beagle’s voyage, speculated that these variations might ‘undermine the stability of species’.

  Well, the rest is history. Although that history did have to wait until specimens of the birds he’d captured in the islands were analysed back in England, where he discovered that what he’d originally thought were different kinds of birds were, in fact, various species of finches – all of which were unique to different islands. With this further insight into the natural world, Mr Darwin developed his theory of natural selection that set out the principles underlying evolution and which were eventually presented in his world-shaking On the Origin of Species. This was nothing less than a giant step in mankind’s own development as a species, and its genesis is no better described than in a quote that Brian had seen only quite recently, which was: ‘the best idea anybody has ever had’.

  Anyway, despite enlightenment arriving back in England, the mundane continued in the Galápagos – with another attempt to kindle some sort of commercial activity on the islands. This was the formation of a new colony, this time based on the exploitation of lichen… Well, even Brian wouldn’t have thought up something that dumb. And he probably wouldn’t have then tried his luck with sugar cane either. Needless to say, no great success was achieved in any of these enterprises, and in the early part of the twentieth century, right up until 1929, cash-strapped Ecuador spent more time looking for a buyer for the islands than it did embarking on any more dismal and disastrous new schemes.

  Incredibly (in retrospect) nobody wanted to buy the Galápagos Islands. Accordingly, Ecuador offered twenty hectares of land (for nothing) to all those who were prepared to settle on its unwanted possession – along with the granting of a tax holiday for ten years, the right to hunt and fish on all the uninhabited islands and the right to retain their citizenship. This offer clearly had some appeal to a number of people fed up with the weather in Europe and fearful of a future in the European Union, and amongst the first to take up the offer were some Scandinavians. These guys were followed shortly thereafter by a number of Americans who had experienced a vision of Donald Trump as President by eating magic mushrooms.

  Well, Brian was beginning to think that some of these historical facts were maybe a bit suspect, to say the least. But although he was now feeling extremely tired he had nearly concluded his potted history of those islands in the Pacific. So why not continue to the end?

  Quite. And anyway, he could now jump forward to the era of the Second World War, when Ecuador authorised the US to build a naval base on one of the islands and to set up some radio stations in other strategic locations. With these facilities, the US was able to patrol the Pacific for submarines and to protect the Panama Canal. After the war, they were then able to gift these facilities to the Ecuadorean government, and what then became an official Ecuadorean military base was possibly the most significant human presence on the islands right up until the 1960s. In fact, the Galápagos Islands were still seen then as very much a pristine environment and definitely worthy of some heavy duty protection. This had first been put in place by the Ecuadorean government as far back as 1935 (the centenary of Darwin’s visit) and it was later reinforced by declaring the islands a national park and recruiting the support of both the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galápagos Islands and the Ecuadorian National Parks Service.

  However, in the first place, all those pirates, whalers, fur traders and hapless colonists had left a legacy of introduced invasive species, in the form of goats, pigs, donkeys, cats, dogs, fire ants, cockroaches, possibly unicorns and certainly a whole list of unwelcome plants such as blackberries and even elephant grass – but no elephants. So, even without too many humans, it wasn’t quite as pristine as one would have liked. And in the second place, it must have been known forty-five years ago that in our crowded, impoverished world, the 2,000 or so humans that then called the Galápagos their home would soon swell to a much larger number and inevitably constitute a new series of threats to these precious islands. As indeed they now do.

  Nevertheless, Brian knew he was now moving from history into current affairs. And the only thing current in his mind at the moment was the need to abandon his musings on tomorrow’s destination and get down to some serious zeds. Sandra already had, with her book still in her lap. Brian would now do the same – immediately – not with a book in his lap, but with a resolve to learn some more Spanish. Enough, anyway, to learn whether Cristóbal Colón, as the initiator of the annexation and settling of South America by Spain and Portugal, was also the initiator of the word ‘colon-isation’. Unlikely, thought Brian. But one could never be sure…

  2.

  Quito isn’t all World Heritage standard. Brian had observed this on his way in from Quito’s airport two days before. But now, in today’s early-morning rush hour, his observation was being confirmed in spades – and in an all too visible haze of diesel fumes. Much of ‘new’ Quito is shabby, ugly, higgledy-piggledy and bathed in car fumes – and so too is much of its barely moving traffic. In fact, whoever had decided to build Quito in such a dramatic, elevated position had clearly not given any thought to the consequences of urban sprawl in what is a decidedly precipitous mountain situation – or to the needs and emissions of modern-day traffic. The result is a somewhat incongruous metropolitan ‘stain’ on an otherwise dramatic environment – bathed for most of the time in a greyish-brown fug. No surprise then that Brian was fairly relieved when the Nature-seekers’ minibus arrived at Quito’s Mariscal Sucre International Airport and all he had to do was endure a fug of bureaucracy rather than one of fumes.

  Yes, when controlling the passage of visitors to the Galápagos, Ecuador takes its responsibilities very seriously indeed, and winging one’s way to this archipelago involves a number of checks, forms and vouchers that certainly wouldn’t be encountered if one was winging one’s way to Ibiza, say. And who can blame it for taking such a stringent approach? After all, the Galápagos archipelago is precious and it deserves to be protected at all costs. Whereas, Ibiza… well, you get the general idea.

  Anyway, eventually the vetting and fretting process led to the boarding of an aeroplane, and the first surprise of the day for Brian. Because whilst he’d thought that the flight to the Galápagos might entail some sort of diminutive aircraft, what he ended up sitting on was a sizable Airbus A320, operated by TAME, the flag carrier and principal airline in the country. And, of course, this sort of aircraft was vital, as it wasn’t carrying just a clutch of foreign visitors to that archipelago in the Pacific, but also a large contingent of its residents, people returning to the Galápagos after a funeral/wedding/shopping binge/secret tryst or whatever else had caused the
m to travel to mainland Ecuador in the first place. And they came in all sorts and at all volumes – from the essentially silent oldies to the unremittingly raucous toddlers, who unfortunately didn’t desist from their boisterous behaviour even when the A320 made a not brief enough stopover at Ecuador’s second city of Guayaquil. Brian was therefore forced to distract himself with a consideration of (a) the paddy fields that seemed to surround Guayaquil – and (b) the insuperable difficulties that surrounded even a reasonable stab at this city’s correct pronunciation. Oh, and then, of course, there was the prospect of flying out over the Pacific and actually arriving in the Galápagos.

  Well, an hour after taking off from Guayaquil, this arrival… arrived. The A320 touched down at the principal airport of the Galápagos, which is situated on the tiny island of Baltra. This island, which sits just to the north of the much larger island of Santa Cruz, is the one on which the Americans built their military base in WWII days and the one that still serves as an Ecuadorian military base to this day. It is best described as nondescript – but, for the passengers of an aeroplane in need of a long runway, also very reassuring.

  The airport building, Brian observed, was very new – as was the covered walkway from the runway to the building, which was topped with solar panels and went some way to shielding Brian and his fellow travellers from the heat of the midday sun. It was remarkably hot, and only a tiny bit cooler in the air-conditioned terminal. This was a little unfortunate because more of those rigorous entry procedures needed to be dealt with here, and this led to the sort of queues one now sees only in Caracas – for luxuries such as toilet paper. That, incidentally, was Brian’s thought as he stood stewing in the queue and which, in retrospect, he considered to be a gross exaggeration of the situation in the terminal as well as being highly disrespectful to the people of Venezuela. But, there again, he had never claimed to be perfect.

  OK. He and the rest of the party were now through all the entry procedures and were waiting for their transport to their ‘maritime vessel’, which, rumour had it, was awaiting them in a nearby bay. The transport (a bus operated by a company that apparently exploited the lack of bus competition on Baltra Island to its huge financial advantage) finally arrived, and the Nature-seekers boarded it. Three minutes later they unboarded it and found themselves at the shore of the bay, under both a covered landing stage and the distinct impression that they would soon be making the acquaintance of an inflatable panga (two of which were moored just below them).

  This was because their guide for the next two weeks had joined them at the airport, had accompanied them on the bus, and was now handing out lifejackets. He was a forty-something Ecuadorian and his name was Darwin… (It really was, as he had apparently been born on the anniversary of the other Darwin’s birthday and had been named accordingly.) But, anyway, the live Darwin, having handed out the lifejackets, was now about to embark on what would prove to be one of his most popular pastimes: that of delivering briefings…

  This first one was on the perils of stepping into an inflatable dinghy (one of the aforementioned pangas), and how to avoid these perils by stepping carefully – and by adopting the all-important ‘panga handhold’. This wasn’t such a bad idea. Because one did need to steady oneself when one was abandoning reassuringly solid land in favour of a not necessarily steady, pliable platform. And how one steadied oneself, as explained by Darwin, was not by grabbing the offered hand of the panga driver as one stepped onto and into his vessel, but by grabbing his forearm, and thus enabling him to grab yours. This way the two parties to the hand/arm-hold would become locked together – entirely platonically – and the embarking party could successfully avoid all those panga-associated perils and thereby stay dry. Of course, a similarly arid outcome could be achieved by employing this same robust handhold when one was disembarking the panga – either onto solid land or onto something like, say, a swaying gangway. So, all in all, the panga handhold was a really very good idea indeed.

  Anyway, when both pangas, in accordance with these instructions, had been safely loaded with their cargo of Nature-seekers, they together set off from the landing stage and made for a boat, a boat that until now had been obscured by another. But soon, it was unobscured and then there it was: the M/Y Beluga, a stunning, literally ship-shaped motor yacht that would be the Nature-seekers’ home for the next two weeks. It was a beaut: a sleek vessel of the sea, over one hundred feet long and rendered in true nautical white, save for an elegant black stripe just beneath its main deck. And it had a proper bridge, and canopies above its upper deck, and portholes and everything… Brian was really quite excited. So too was Sandra. She told him.

  It wasn’t long before all its passengers were aboard it, all of them having avoided any mishaps in the transfer between the pangas and the Beluga’s gangway, slung from its side. It also wasn’t long before Brian and Sandra were exploring their cabin and agreeing that they had certainly made the right decision in not bringing a cat – or even a kitten. Yes, nothing could have been swung in their compact accommodation, other than maybe one leg over the other as, sitting on their beds, they took in their cabin’s bijou charm.

  It was pretty small, but it was also pretty, full stop. It had two narrow beds occupying most of its floor – with just two feet between them – and, off it, a bathroom that had been modelled on a corridor – and then shrunk. Indeed, it seemed to offer the possibility of shaving while seated on the loo and there was clearly no risk whatsoever of falling over in the shower. There simply wasn’t enough room. However, to return to the cabin proper – and why it had such charm and why, indeed, Brian and Sandra had chosen it in preference to other slightly larger cabins on this boat. And this was because, with a sister cabin, it was at the stern of the boat on its main deck – just off the boat’s bar area – and unlike all the cabins down below, it had no portholes but just two picture windows that made up two of its four sides (at the back and at the side of the boat – obviously). It was, indeed, a cabin with a panoramic view – and, of course, it had that easy access to the bar. Hell, what could be better? Well, maybe contemplating the charm of one’s cabin with a drink in one’s hand and the prospect of the first proper meal of the day.

  Well, in the event, this contemplation had to be put on hold, because Darwin had another briefing to deliver – on the disposition of various amenities on the boat. And even after what proved to be a splendid lunch, contemplation again had to be deferred because there was now a briefing by Darwin on the dos and don’ts of being in the Galápagos National Park. Oh, and then a briefing on the intricacies of ‘wet landings’ from the panga as opposed to dry landings – which would need to be borne in mind for one of tomorrow’s expeditions. But not for today’s. Yes, while the Nature-seekers had been feeding themselves and listening to Darwin, the captain of the Beluga had taken it from that Baltra Island bay, along the north coast of Santa Cruz and had now parked it off the north-west of this much larger island at a site called Dragon Hill. Just three hours into their nautical adventure and the Nature-seekers were about to go on their first proper excursion. Great!

  Now, at this stage it is worth pointing out that Darwin’s briefing on the dos and don’ts of the national park had underlined the severe restrictions imposed on all those visiting the park. That is to say that by paying one’s US$100 entry fee to the Galápagos, one was not then able to go anywhere one wanted. In the first place one would, in all likelihood, be on a boat, and the operators of that (licensed) boat would have agreed an itinerary with the park authorities from which it could not vary and which was intended to ensure that none of the Galápagos’ ‘visitor sites’ became overwhelmed by a flotilla of boats all arriving at the same time. Furthermore, those ‘visitor sites’ were very important, as they were the only sites on virtually all the islands where visitors were allowed to set foot. And when they’d set foot on these sites, they’d have to make quite sure that they didn’t deviate from clearly marked paths. All these res
trictions might be regarded as overly onerous but they were clearly essential if the Galápagos archipelago was not to be completely ruined and its wildlife destroyed. Even so, they did mean that Brian and Sandra were embarking on the sort of controlled ‘expedition’ that was the antithesis of the sort of free-roaming experience they often enjoyed in places such as Namibia and Botswana. And they would certainly never set eyes on a Land Cruiser here.

  Anyway, they had known about this necessary regimentation before they had embarked on this modest odyssey and in no way would it be distracting from the excitement of their first taste of the real Galápagos. Nor would the prospect of their first ‘dry landing’.

  In the Beluga’s two pangas, the fourteen Nature-seekers had abandoned their mother ship and had motored gently towards a rocky promontory composed of ‘irregular’ rocks. They looked as though they might provide a bit of a challenge in the disembarking stakes, particularly as there was a noticeable swell in the sea and the rocks looked as though they were all slicked with algae. They were. And it was something of a challenge. But eventually, Darwin had all his charges on terra firma, and the only moisture about their persons was not as a result of accidental immersion but instead as a result of copious perspiration. It was furiously hot, and the sun was so intense that even Brian gave not a second’s thought to donning a hat. Indeed, anybody who found themselves standing on a beach, listening to the first of scores of lectures to be delivered by Darwin over the next fortnight, would not have given it a second’s thought, although he or she might have considered the wisdom of these open-air addresses…