Thursday, our group flew to Isla San Cristobal, the easternmost of the Galapagos Islands via Guayaquil and checked into the Casablanca hotel in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. At lunch we met our Park guide Pablo, our dive master Franco, and Crystal, wife of New Zealander Tim, who owns “Galakiwiâ€, our cleverly named travel company for this trip. After lunch, we bicycled from the island’s highlands to its lowlands, passing through El Progresso, an old company town where the workers murdered the sugar magnate who employed them in 1904. We stopped at La Loberia beach to meet the sea lions (which outnumber the people on San Cristobal), watch some marine iguanas fighting (March is mating season) and began our bird watching list (see Appendix). At dinner, Sherwin was feted by fellow traveler Kathleen with a rap song about his passions, another birthday gift.

Friday, some of us went scuba diving and others went snorkeling at Isla Lobos and Kicker Rock. We all saw Galapagos sharks, white tip sharks, a hammerhead shark, and green sea turtles. While scuba diving, I saw a sting ray, a manta ray and an eagle ray, along with many grunts, King angel fish, puffer fish, parrot fish and some orange and purple soft coral growing on the sheer walls of Kicker Rock. In between dives, I snorkeled briefly with “blue fin†Tim, but could hardly keep up with his pace, due to the enormous size of his swim fins. On the way back to Port, we saw a pod of orca whales, numbering at least seven individuals. It was a good day for the sea lion pups to stay on the sidewalks of town! We had 15 minutes to ditch our swim suits and assemble for a trip to the Darwin Interpretive Center, which was a very hot and very interesting place covering both the human and natural aspects of the Galapagos Islands. How were the Galapagos formed? One day millions of years ago, they weren’t there, then the next day, whole landmasses welled up out of the ocean: Molten islands, boiling and slopping about on the surface until they set. Half of the group went back to the hotel to escape the heat, but Frank and a few others climbed Frigate Hill with Pablo to see the harbor and the sunset.

Saturday, we traveled by boat to Isabella Island via Entebel (birds), Champion Beach on Floreana Island (snorkeling), and Devil’s Crown (an underwater volcano crater). During our snorkel, we were buzzed by sea lions and once underway again, we passed through a school of dolphins. Before dinner we visited the local pink flamingo colony. We spent Sunday hiking on the Sierra Negra volcano, which rises nearly a mile above the ocean floor (round trip eleven miles and two 600 foot elevation gains, with the high point on the caldera measuring 3315 feet per Frank’s GPS). This volcano last erupted in 2005 and its lava blackened crater is the second largest in the world (seven miles wide). We lunched under an isolated tree called “El Jaboncilla†whose shade was very much appreciated, then walked across lava flows of various ages, some of which reached the sea. It was a landscape of black and red rock and very little vegetation, just a few ferns and cactuses.

Monday morning we toured Port Villamil’s bay in boats, then disembarked on Isleto Tintoreras to see marine iguanas nesting. Afterwards, we snorkeled in the bay to watch them swimming – they eat sea grass off submerged rocks – a regular convoy. We also saw green sea turtles sleeping on the sandy bottom. After lunch, we hiked to a giant tortoise breeding center, where they are incubating tortoise eggs until the babies hatch and grow shells hard enough to survive attacks by domestic animals like dogs, cats, and pigs, then they are released. Following ice cream at the Center, Bronwyn (Sherwin’s wife, no “Winnie†jokes please) and I went to the Wall of Tears, built when there were penal colonies on Isabella. The road to the wall was built by the US Navy during WWII to access radar stations that were monitoring approaches to the Panama Canal to protect it from Japanese air attacks. On our way back to our hotel, we saw five wild giant tortoises, a testament to the success of the breeding center.

Tuesday morning, we departed Isabella for Isla Santa Cruz, a two hour crossing rough enough to make me sea sick. Upon on arrival, we visited an impressive lava tube in the highlands, which was only discovered in the 1980’s when farm animals started falling into it. The interior coolness of the lava tube was most welcome, since it was about 90 degrees Fahrenheit outside and 90 percent humidity! Then we walked through an area where a farm borders the National Park and wild tortoises wander freely between the two jurisdictions. After a fresh fish lunch, we lounged in our hotel “Lobo de Mar†because many businesses were closed for Fat Tuesday. Some of the group went kayaking at Tortuga Bay, but I stayed behind to watch the daily catch of tunas and rockfish come in for filleting at the fish market, a process made much more amusing by the crowd of pelicans, seals, gulls and iguanas waiting for their share of the offal.

Wednesday, we went to the Darwin Research Center to see more on captive tortoise breeding, a land iguana (orange, unlike the black and gray marine iguanas), and to see Lonesome George (the only tortoise from Isla Pinta left in the world, age estimated to be between 90 and 100 years). Repeated attempts to breed him to females with similar DNA have failed, but we watched him trying to mate with a new arrival! After lunch, we left Santa Cruz to return to San Cristobal by boat and stopped to snorkel at Santa Fe Island. There, we saw a huge school of black striped selama fish, a sting ray, a shark, and the ubiquitous green sea turtles and sea lions. It was awesome to watch Crystal free dive into the fish school and watch them part for her. By the end of this trip, Frank and I had 37 new birds on our list, and we learned that all finches in the Galapagos Islands are collectively called Darwin finches, but they are listed separately by their real names in our list.

On Thursday, we flew back to Quito and enjoyed our final group dinner with birthday-man Sherwin. On Friday, we flew home from Quito via Miami and Dallas. On our 7 am take-off from Quito, I could see four snow covered volcanoes out my plane’s window and later, I saw the Panama Canal as we flew over it. I look forward to reliving this great trip at the post trip party to be themed “Survival of the Fittestâ€.

| January 1970