Galapogus Day 3 and 4
Zepher
Chris & Lyn Darch
Sun 18 May 2008 13:47
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Hi Folks ,
Day Three
Were to start ! we took our first guided tour into
the highlands , the climate up here is much cooler than at sea level , we drove
for an hour and got to the national park areas , within these parks there are
private farms that whilst owning and working the land have to follow the
national park rules on what can and cant be done, for instance, all the fences
have to have a gap of about two and a half feet between the ground and the lower
wire to allow the giant tortoises to roam freely .
We arrived at one of these farms and followed
a trail for about twenty minuets with the guide , we came across a number of
giant tortoises all natural , these creatures are about four feet long and
lumber along at speeds faster than you think , the guide told us that they
migrate from the highlands to the lowlands to breed as its warmer down there and
the heat gets them excited ! it can take up to between six and ten years to get
down there , and the same time to return to the highlands ! but I suppose if you
live two hundred and fifty years that a walk in the park .
After this we went to the Lava tunnels , the
island is hollowed out with lots of these underground tunnels formed by
each eruption the lave is naturalised piped to the coarse using these conduits
and the islands expanded in size over the centuries , this in conjunction
with the land rising is one of the theories on how the tortoises have developed
, they reckon they were turtles originally and as the land rose they were
trapped is salt water lakes , over the centuries these dried up trapping the
turtles , they evolved into what we have today , but still migrate to the sea to
bonk and produce eggs.
As they had no natural predators they
grew in size as well , that is until man pitched up , they seemed the ideal
packed lunch for the ancient marina , they don't drink water and apparently
taste ok, so they loaded them onto the ships and sailed away with a
tortoises in shell alive , this gave them fresh meat for six months ,
a turtle a day ! equals lots of dead turtles , anyway they decimated the
population by 90% and it wasn't until the 1920's that they started to do
anything about it .
A weary crew then returned to the boat , after
a good day out , complete with our laundry bags and sat in the cockpit with the
swinging tilly lamp discussing the days events and the mechanical advantages of
a dif lock on a landrover , at this point some of us fell asleep
.....
Day Four
It started with toast , we stoked up on a good
breakfast then went ashore " exploring in our shorts" as an eminent Welshman
once said !
We walked to the Charles Darwin Foundation centre
which houses a breeding program for the tortoises to repopulate the islands ,
this is a complicated affair as the surviving ones exists on different
islands and are of different evolutionary strains , although they have lost some
of them completely as our 19th century cousins had whipped out some of the
island species completely by the time man decided to do something about it
!
We toured around the breeding pens and
visited the museum areas which have the history and information about what has
happened to the islands wild life and plants , its the same story as in other
remote places , the introduction of horses,dogs,cats,pigs,goats, and pigeons
have decimated the local wild life , its the same with the plant life as well
fruit trees that have been introduced , which have also bought pests with them
have outgrown the indigenous species , this is one of the problems as the
tortoise eat certain kinds of vegetation which the new species try and
strangle .
There are iradication programs in place
to remove the islands of the animals , these have been achieved on some of the
smaller islands , but on the larger ones it seems to be an uphill struggle , on
the plant front they are trying to use genetics to turn the plants reproductive
cycles into a neutral state so they wont produce any more and that the natural
species will survive .
The next area of interest was the giant
Iguana breeding programme they have the same problem with the introduced species
eating the eggs , and in the case of the wild pigs eating the iguanas as well as
the eggs .
After the morning out Lyn ad myself returned to the
boat to wait for the fuel barge , we filled the diesel tanks so now are topped
off ready for the trip to the Marquises isles , only a few more jobs to do
before the end of the week then we will be ready for the off next Saturday
.
Day Five
Well folks you wont believe it but I went for a
Scooby doo dive , it was to Gordon rocks , its supposed to be one of the holy
grails of sport divers , I was dragged kicking and screaming along with Ruth and
Rob , WOW it was worth every penny , it was an early start , six o/c kick off
into a high speed boat and propelled at a vast rate of knots 20 miles up the
coast to the dive site , its a pinnacle of rock that rises straight out of the
seabed some 3000 metres below , after a safety dive , we on a nearby island we
went to the rock , well I though the read sea had lots to offer but here we got
the lot in one sitting , sea turtles , hammerhead sharks , leopard rays , large
schools of tropical fish of all varieties , and white tipped sharks , all
feeding on the upwelling of nutrients from the deep water , wait till you see
the photos .... we took a second dive just after high water , and had a repeat
performance with the aquatic wild life .
After that we went to a sheltered bay near by
and anchored , then swam into the rocks and frolicked with the sealions who were
swimming about us at close quarters which was amazing ... more photos
..
On completion of this we had a bumpy ride
back to Academia bay , slamming into wind over tide at 20 knots was a blast for
some of us but not for others , we got back without huey appearing on the deck
!
After a shower onboard it was straight ashore
to for a few beers and the consumption of a "horse between to bread vans" that's
how Hungary we were !
Lyn mean while had been having a day away
from the madding crowed , doing her art thing and having some piece and quite
.
That's us up to date so far , we will put a load of
photos on the internet via a cafe so it will be much quicker that our steam
engine satalight data transfer .
A Happy Knackerd Crew all bubbled out
!!!!!
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