When Tomorrow Comes

Monday 1 March
Isla Isabella, Galapagos Islands

In the same way that I’ve been spoilt for hot sunny deserted beaches by Uluwatu in Indonesia, I think I’ve now been spoilt for awesome landscapes by Patagonia. Admittedly, I haven’t been to New Zealand yet and from what I hear and what I’ve seen, Middle Earth looks equally spectacular. But today we walked up the side of a volcano. We reached the top and there was a great vista across the whole of the caldera, many kilometres across. It seems we were very lucky with the weather, it was unusually clear. But it’s no Patagonia.

Though I’m probably being a miserable bastard. It was still pretty awesome. I also bonded with Veronica over TV reporting. She’s a TV reporter from Norway. So is my brother.

After lunch I had a quick dip in the sea. It was a bit rough but warm, and pretty sunny – I could feel myself burning after a while.

I didn’t know what was going to happen next. Given that the printed itinerary I was given was out of the window since the tsunami had messed things up, I was never too sure what was going to happen. Nevertheless Wilmer eventually showed up like Mr. Benn and we were off on a new adventure.

This time is was to Las Islas Tintoreras – the Shark Islands to you and me. These were a group of very small islands formed by magma flowing into the sea, so it was an alien landscape of very sharp and dramatic black rocks, covered in bits of white lichen. But the real sight was the amount of animals.

There were sea lions lounging around everywhere, drying off in the sun. There was even one large sea lion that was harassing all the other male sea lions. For all their cute appearances – and they do look like dog of the sea – they are also very violent towards each other, and it’s rare to find one without a scar or wound of some sort – if not many. I saw one with an eye missing.

There were penguins crowding together on one rock. It was so bizarre to see penguins on the equator. They really must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Though I bet they’re feeling a lot more smug than their cousins in the Arctics. They don’t need to huddle together all the time to prevent themselves freezing to death.

There were loads of crabs, black, red and yellow in colour, though they were very shy and would run away if you got near them.

And then there were the iguanas. There were more iguanas here than you could possibly imagine. There was one beach where they were all in the process of laying eggs and this crowded area meant that there were the odd fights and strange hissing displays to keep the others away.

And finally there were the blue-footed boobies which we saw crowding together on another rock. They have blue feet like the name suggests. But they don’t look like boobies in the traditional sense. They were quite cool though.

After that the day ended with a meal and drink to celebrate Owen’s last night – one of the conservationists that was leaving to head back to Australia and then do a several month sailing trip from Thailand to India (I think, from memory).