South America,  Ecuador,  Travel

Galapagos Islands (Santa Cruz)

June 28, 2021 /

The group went to North Seymour Island. Except for me, three of the eight people in the group were also from the Bay Area of California. A grandfather in his 70s joined the group alone because his wife and other friends went to a diving group for a week. , He felt that diving in a week was too long, so he signed up for a Spanish language training class in Quito, came to join the group one day in advance, and then joined his wife tomorrow. They had planned to come here last June for his wife's retirement trip, and all the tours had been signed up, but it was delayed by a year due to the pandemic. Another father and son, an Israeli who moved to the Bay Area three years ago, works at Hewlett-Packard and has been working remotely since last year, taking his 13-year-old son on a summer trip. Another couple is from Florida, and the woman is also a teacher.

This North Seymour Island is simply a bird's paradise. Birds and other species here are not afraid of people at all. Tourists should walk on the trail under the guidance of a guide and should not get too close to animals. If there are animals on the trail, tourists must take a detour and not disturb them. The tour guide said that this season is the best time to visit the island, because it is the season for many birds to mate and mate, and the weather is very cool. If it is too hot, the birds will hide under the trees instead of staying in places without shade. on. I saw a lot of blue-footed boobies a few days ago, but today is the first time I saw their chicks. The white and fluffy ones are very cute, and their feet haven't turned blue yet. Several males whose courtship was rejected were also seen. The tour guide said that they usually lay two eggs, but often only one chick survives, because food is limited, and they have to scramble for limited food in order to survive. So in the end the stronger chick wins, and the parents make the tough decision: long pain is worse than short pain, and kill the weaker chick. Otherwise another frigate will kill weaker chicks in a more brutally slow manner. This is the so-called natural selection, survival of the fittest. After about a year or so, when the chicks are fully mature and do not need parental feeding, the parents mate with new mates. There are also rare red-footed boobies on other islands. It is said that the feet that eat more squid are red, and the feet that eat more fish are blue. I saw more black sea monitor lizards a few days ago, but today all I saw are yellow land monitor lizards.

Today, I also saw the frigate frigate bird for the first time. This bird has a throat pouch with bare skin. In order to attract females, the throat pouch will be bright red and bulged. The bigger the bulge, the easier it is to attract females to mate with it. . This bird is said to be the fastest flying bird in the world. This kind of seabird is also called pirate bird, because because the end of their mouth is hooked, they are not good at plunging straight into the sea to prey on fish, and their feathers are not waterproof, so they cannot fly once they get wet, so they are not good at preying on their own. Fish can only survive by robbing other birds of food. They generally only lay one egg. Because food is limited, they have to feed young birds for two years until they are mature, and their parents will find new mates to mate and breed. The second picture below is a frigate bird with corpses all over the field. The tour guide said that this was the result of their "playing" and killing each other.

There is a small beach island next to North Seymour Island. The beach and the sea are full of sea lions, and they like to be close to people. I saw them swimming, chasing and fighting in shallow water up close, teasing sea lions on the shore, and one of them ran towards me. It’s not that I don’t keep a safe distance from animals! At the end of the beach, I saw a white thing in the distance. When I got closer, I found that it was the entire skeleton of a giant animal. When I asked the tour guide, it should be a small humpback whale. It feels like this was only seen in museums before.

The next morning, I walked 40 minutes to the Tortuga Bay beach. Because it was very early, there was no one on the entire beach. When I went out, people from Wuyang and Wuyang began to come in. Signed up for a half-day group to visit the coast of the Big Island. The other four people in the group were two couples from San Cramento, California. They signed up for a 14-day tour of Ecuador in the United States. The group was arranged. I only stayed in Galapagos for two days. I feel sorry for them. I can't understand the way of traveling with all the groups, but they don't seem to understand that I don't plan in advance. A good way to travel.

I went to a small strait and swam in the water. After snorkeling, I saw thousands of small sardines swimming around, and small sharks chasing them, which was particularly shocking. In the afternoon, I went to Gemini Crater, which was full of plants and looked green.

Afterwards, I went to visit the giant tortoise/tortoise nature reserve. There are giant tortoises in the wild everywhere. There is no staff to feed them. They may also climb to other areas and not come back. Not a single tortoise will been tracked. When I entered the park, the staff urged me to take a picture in the real turtle shell, and it took me a long time to get in.

Learned a lot from the volunteer docents. They are only vegetarian, such as fruits (oranges, passion fruit, guava, poisonous apples that humans cannot eat, etc.), grasses, leaves, and cacti, etc. These foods are available in this reserve, so they live very comfortably. Adult giant tortoises can generally live for nearly two hundred years, with a body length of 1.5 meters. Males are much heavier than females and can reach more than 200 kilograms. They move very slowly and therefore consume very little energy, which is the secret to their longevity. Their age can be roughly estimated from their carapaces. The younger the carapace, the clearer the lines on the carapace, the more smooth the carapace of the older turtles, and the less clear the lines are. Because over time, the outer layer wears to varying degrees. Their limbs are stout and columnar. They are cold-blooded, so they spend an hour or two soaking up the sun's heat during the day and eight or nine hours foraging. They also like to roll in mud pits to cool off and protect their skin from mosquito bites. There are also several tunnels formed by volcanic eruptions nearby.

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