I've been trying to explain to people how close you can get to the critters on the Galapagos, and I realize, it just doesn't... you can't explain. You can never get this close.
We could've gotten closer to these Nazca Boobies (or any of the critters). Only reason we kept our distance is that we were told to.
It was our last afternoon on the cruise, and we stopped off at a picture perfect white sand beach with crystal blue water lapping along the shoreline. The only thing different from this beach and some resort in the Caribbean was that the little umbrellas and benches were replaced with sea lions honking amongst themselves.
I popped into the water for a last bit of snorkeling. The water was the clearest yet, but there wasn’t anything super exciting. No sharks or sea lions or penguins. There were some rays and a couple fish I hadn’t seen before. But it was fun and relaxing.
Katie stayed on the beach, checking out the sea lions. There were some really young pups playing which made us both happy. She, for getting to see them. Me, for knowing she didn’t miss out on the cuteness I saw a couple days ago.
We arrived off Puerto Ayora, the Galapagos’ largest settlement, late last night. Plan for the day: giant tortoises.
In the morning, we hopped on a tourist bus (brand=”Buscars” which is a fun play on words if you speak both Spanish and English) and rode up to the highlands above Puerto Ayora to see giant tortoises in the wild. Before, though, we stopped off at Los Gemelos, a pair of big sink holes. The holes were… well, holes in the ground. What was funny was that we were all somewhat land-sick. I think it was the bus ride that did it, as none of us had any issues hiking on the islands. It wasn’t anything more than feeling a bit dizzy, and the dizziness, I think, was caused by many of us unconsciously swaying. I saw one woman, Sandy, rocking back and forth, and mentioned it to her. She was utterly shocked. She had no idea she was swaying.
I only noticed I was swaying when I was looking through the viewfinder of my camera, and the whole world started moving. The camera made me extra dizzy.
The tortoises, though… on the one hand, seeing a turtle that huge—big enough to ride on—just walking around in the wild was amazing. From a photographic perspective, though… First, the light was horrible. The first tortoise we saw stayed in the shade (probably to keep cool), and with the equatorial sun blasting down, you had bright light and dark shadow making super contrasty pictures. Second, the tortoises were nasty, dirty things. Faces covered in mucus, masticated vegetation and slimy muck. That didn’t make for a great picture either.
The rest of the tortoises we saw were in pools of water. Mucky, muddy, nasty, algae covered water.
I didn’t get a single shot I liked.
The afternoon… we went to the Darwin Research Center, run by the National Park. Lots of big tortoises with lots of bad lighting. No good shots there either. I snapped 130 frames, least of any day on the cruise. Maybe Katie will have some good ones.
After that, we had the afternoon to ourselves. We stopped by a little restaurant for a snack and a cool drink. Ended up having waffles with fruit, ice cream and chocolate sauce. It was delicious.
It’s hot. Really fucking hot. The path is nothing more than big huge rocks. It’s the perfect combination to twist an ankle.
The heat really slowed me down: I shot over 800 frames on the 25th. Today, despite all the bird activity, I shot about 300.
Still, I got what I wanted:a male magnificent frigate bird with its huge red pouch fully inflated.
Katie spent the afternoon on the boat resting her foot. I was worried enough about her that I suggested she depart the cruise early and stay an extra night in the Finch Bay Hotel on Isla Santa Cruz—where we’d be spending a couple days after the cruise. That would’ve solved another problem as well: earlier in the day, I had realized that I counted the days wrong, and had pre-paid the Finch Bay for a room on Saturday night (29-JAN-11). I thought that was the final day on the boat. Turned out the last day on the boat was Sunday (30-JAN-11). The Finch Bay ain’t cheap (I don’t want to say how much), and something tells me I won’t get a refund.
Katie and I spent some time before arriving at Bartolome reading the manual for our underwater camera (our early attempts had been dominated by blurry and overly green shots). Apparently, there was a setting for underwater pictures that took out the green and set the ISO high enough to reduce the blur. It worked pretty well, but nothing changed the difficulty of holding the camera still.
This was the best snorkeling of the trip. It wasn’t the clearest water, it wasn’t the biggest variety of fish. It was one thing, and one thing only. It was Galapagos penguins, about a dozen of them, swimming and eating right around me for nearly the entire time I was in the water.
They didn’t care that we were around them in the water. They didn’t even care if we touched them. Or more accurately, if they touched me (it's against the law to t touch the critters, but they can touch you all they want). I had my hand in front of me, and one of the little guys swam right past me, brushing the tips of my fingers as he went.
The only thing I wish is that one of them would’ve paused in front of my camera just for few seconds. I have an insanely awesome shot of a penguin looking right into my camera. Except that the shot was blurry b/c the camera had focused when the penguin was a second further back.
Katie spent the dive sitting on the beach: her foot and ankle hurt too much.
Today was an early start, around 6am. Katie warned me the night before that she would be cranky, and her prediction was accurate. After a few gentle attempts to wake her, I realized the wiser strategy would’ve been to leave her alone.
The goal for this morning was a low peak at the top of Bartolome Island that has a nice view of some of the surrounding islands with a mid-ground of a bay with an odd rock formation. The shot is below.
I understand the theory of landscape photography: 70% of the photo is your foreground (meaning that’s what you spend all your time trying to find), 20% is the back-ground, and 10% is the sky (unless the clouds are super awesome). Foreground? Just dirt. Acres of dirt. Dirt everywhere. Oh, also our shadows. The sky? Super boring, and with all that dirt in the foreground, I included way too much sky. Only choice was a) to crop the top and the bottom and have a thin shot, like I did above, or b) put people in the foreground. Which doesn’t interest me. Karina took some of Katie and me posing in front of the fence, though.
Honestly, I could’ve passed on this hike. Katie and I both wish she had: on the way up, she was getting badly winded, probably because of the pregnancy. On the way down, she lost her footing and twisted her foot.
After Sombrero Chino, the Flamingo chugged to Isla Bartolome a few miles north, and laid anchor before sunset (photo below, of Bartolome from the Sun Deck of the Flamingo).
For the first time on the trip, we were in range of a cellphone tower somewhere. The first ring from Jeff’s mobile was jarring. The second time his phone rang, I didn’t have to say anything: the entire complement of passengers up on the sun deck barked at him to turn off the ringer and take his call elsewhere.
Later, Sandy, Jeff’s mom, called her office and asked for a news update. It was the first we’d heard of the outside world since getting on the boat. Apparently, the Moscow airport had been bombed a couple days earlier, killing 35 people.
The Flamingo chugged along during lunch and siesta until we reached an island called Sombrero Chino mid-afternoon. It really did look like a broad-based conical Chinese Hat. Not sure why I didn’t take a picture of it.
Our underwater shots the prior times snorkeling had been green and dull. I thought maybe turning the flash on would be a good idea to brighten things up, and Katie figured out how to set it to "always on." This wasn't a brilliant idea, as you can see from the photo I took of her, below (the flash bounces light off of all the crap in the water).
Still, photography was easier at Chinese Hat: Malina said the water conditions were so clear that it would almost be like swimming in a fish tank. She was right. It was brilliant.
The first bit of excitement was a marine iguana feeding on algae in a tiny little inlet. With Katie and a fellow passenger, Jeff, in the inlet, I didn’t have much room to maneuver. I was so close to the iguana, the small waves were enough to move the iguana’s head in and out of the shot. I couldn’t zoom out any further, and I couldn’t move any further back with the other two people there. I ended up without any decent shots in the minute before the iguana went back on land. The shot below was the best I could manage.
The next bit of excitement turned out to be a feeding frenzy caused by lobster heads dropped off a fishing boat. In addition to huge clumps of fish, we saw a huge ray. But the water was deep enough, I couldn’t swim down to get a shot of the ray from the front.
Having the flash on all the time drained the battery fast, so we missed some penguins at the end of the swim. But it was a great day snorkeling.
I manage developer programs at Microsoft, and am an amateur photographer.
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