Week 4 Galapagos Islands

Frigate Birds are common and fairly large. They are often seen soaring over boats. This one, along with 4 others was following our boat between islands slip streaming in order to glide and save energy. The males during courtship inflate the red sack in their throat area to form a large balloon. It takes half and hour to inflate the sack to its full size in order to look handsome and attract females.






Spiders are often seen with large webs between the tree branches.












A Lava Lizard eating a moth or grasshopper. The Lava Lizard is much smaller than the Iguana often with a bright red chest.














A saltwater lagoon on Isla Rabida. Our boat the Darwin is on the right in the background. The lagoon was home to flamingos until 10 years ago when it became contaminated with sea lion poo!!A flamingo just happened to turn up on the day we were there.









A Sally Lightfoot Crab which are all over the island These crabs are very colourful.













This sealion pup was on the beach and kept coming up to us. His mother was being harrassed by a couple of Pelicans further down the beach.














The tray shows a tortoise egg which is clearly marked with details of where it is from and the embryos are 4 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks and 16 weeks. The baby tortoise is 3 months old.










On Isla Isabela there is a breeding centre for the Giant Tortoises. Here you can see many of the different species from around the islands and also the different ages. The breeding centre is needed to improve the survival rate as many eggs are damaged by goats , burros, rats and dogs. Eggs are collected by rangers, Incubated and hatched. The temperature of the incubator determines the sex of the tortoise.

On Isla Isabela we visited the Wall Of Tears. In 1946 an ex American Base used in WW2 was converted to be a penal colony for prisoners from Ecuador. The governor of the time didn't want the prisoners to be idle so he made them collect rocks and build this wall. It was a very harsh regime. They carried large boulders of volcanic rock on their backs to build the wall which is said to have over 2 million rocks in it. It was never finished.

Marine Iguana (Male). They have very prehistoric looking faces.

Marine Iguanas catching the sun. They too have to go into water to regulate their body temperature.

Just around the corner fromthe Iguanas there were White Tipped Reef Sharks. These are about a metre to metre and a half long. We were snorkelling with these sharks on several occasions. Other sharks seen were the Galapagos Shark and a Hammerhead Shark. The Galapagos Sharks were often seen circling the boat.

Marine Iguanas are very plentiful on nearly all the islands. In particular they like the black lava islands and on Isla Isabela Tintoreras there were hundreds of varying sizes. They were on the paths often in groups and they are very well camouflaged with the black lava.

The Giant Tortoises need to wallow in water in order to cool themselves down. They are also found on other islands other than Santa Cruz but the species vary according to the island they come from.

On our first afternoon on Isla De Santa Cruz we visited an area where Giant Tortoises roamed. Mrs Lockwood watching one of many we saw. This one is about 80 years old.
They can live up to 150 years old.

This is the marina on Isla De Santa Cruz in the Galapagos Islands. This is where we began our 4 night cruise around the islands to see the wildlife.
We didn't have to travel far as there is a sea lion asleep under the bench where the person is sitting!! Much of the wildlife is very tame and not afraid of humans. People are requested always to maintain a 2 metre gap from any wildlife.

This is the hotel in Quito. Quito is the capital of Ecuador and is a very long , thin city sat bewtween 2 volcanoes. Quito lies on the equator at an altitude of 2860m. The elevation means that the weather is often cooler than expected for somewhere lying on the equator. The centre of town is colonial Spanish again with some beautiful architecture. This is the stop off before flying to the Galapagos Islands.