Day 6, giant tortoises!
As part of our daily agenda, our tour leaders would helpfully drew our path on a dry erase map. Here is what it looked like as of Day 6. On Day 1 we started in Baltra, near middle right. Our first 2 nights were to and from Isla Genovesa, and those blue lines are the strong currents coming up and hitting the boat broadside, making for some long, sleepless nights. We spent the last few days of this first week bopping around the ‘seahorse’ that is Isla Isabela.
You’ll note that breakfast on day 6 was moved to 6 am – this was because the incessant cloud layers were making it dark in the morning, not conducive to photography, and it was kind of pointless to get ashore at first light if that light was behind thick clouds. We all appreciated being able to ‘sleep in’.
You can see on the agenda we had planned to spend a long time, 3 1/2 hours, at this relatively short loop – for good reason. It allowed us to leisurely hang out with the giant tortoises and land iguanas.
The map above is the only one that I don’t think fits what we did. For example, we did not see any of the uplifted coral heads, and the only indication we saw of the 1954 uplifting event, that raised the seafloor up about 15 feet, was some crushed coral under a ‘poison apple’ tree. On further reading it seems the coral heads are rapidly deteriorating. No matter – we were here to see giant tortoises.
The site sits in the shadow of the Alcedo volcano. This particular species of giant tortoise, Chelonoidis niger vandenburghi (Volcán Alcedo Giant Tortoise) make their way down from the volcano’s caldera, where they breed, to graze on grass and the poison apples.
We saw our first tortoise within the first 30 minutes, hanging out under a tree nibbling on an apple.
Those apples, by the way, are not the size of normal human apples – the tortoises are large, but not 10 fee long! The largest ‘apples’ are maybe the size of a small plum; perhaps 2 inches across. While poison to us (don’t even touch the tree, they warned), they don’t bother the tortoises.
We wandered around a loop, passing by empty land iguana nests – holes in the ground – and Tui was quite worried that perhaps some of them hadn’t made it. As you might imagine, human nature being what it is, there is an illicit trade in Galapagos animals; here’s one recent story. I’ll put your mind at ease – when we came by a few hours later, the land iguanas (they are all very different and distinctly identifiable; Tui seems to personally know each and every one) were all out and about.
After stopping at a field where we saw some tortoises in the distance (way in the distance), we rounded a corner and found this “juvenile” (it was probably 20-30 years old) below, in the middle of a rocky area. Just hanging out for us. You’ll also note the sun had decided to pay us a visit.
It’s difficult with these particular photos to gauge size, but I’d say it was probably 2 feet long. I was very happy to have the Z6’s tilt screen so I could place the camera on the ground, at the level of the tortoise, and take shots without having to lay on my stomach.
Just a few feet away another tortoise was chomping on some apples. The pictures tell the messy story. They don’t so much eat the apples as smoosh them into a paste. I guess some of it gets in their tummy? Messier than my kids.
By this point in the morning, after having been ashore already for 2 hours, another group arrived into our zone. As the other group came the tortoise got a little spooked by the new influx of tourists (these were ‘standard’ tourists, not that we look down on non-photography tours. Well, maybe a little…) and started to pull its head in. As they do this, they make a very loud and somewhat disturbing hissing sound. It turns out that is not a vocalization of any sort. It’s simply air being expelled from their lungs to make room for the head and neck. It’s a pretty slow process; I question how effective it is at keeping the turtle safe from predators. Also, there are no predators. But the sound has the unintentional effect of saying, very loudly, “get away from me”.
We reassembled and moved on to a land iguana who was warming up in the rare Galapagos sun. This yellow guy was quite beautiful, and I’m so happy the sun was out so we could capture his color.
Just a few feet away was a second iguana, right along the dirt path. We couldn’t form the standard photographer’s circle, given the constraints of our surroundings, but we did our best. I took a couple of portraits (above), but I like the shot from the backside, with the iguana looking at me over its shoulder, with the tail trail forming a nice sight line from the bottom left of the frame.
On our way out, almost 3 1/2 hours after landing, we had the most amazing experience. We had seen a really large tortoise moving through the brush, as you can see below in the first picture. I saw where he was going, so moved ahead of it on the path, shown in the bottom right. I was the first to move over, so I had my pick of spots. As the tortoise moved closer, I realized I made a minor mistake – the sun was coming in from the left, so I was shooting the shadowed side of his face.
That said, despite being on the wrong side of sun, I did get a very close encounter experience with a 500 pound Galapagos tortoise that the others did not get. The path where I was located was quite narrow, and there wasn’t much room to move off the path, in contrast to the other side where the rest of the crew set up well away from the danger. The tortoise eyed my toes with intent (see picture below), and started to move right towards me.
You can see he got pretty close, but I was fairly certain I could outrun a 100 year old, half ton tortoise, should it come to that. And that open mouth wasn’t aggressive, even though it looks very menacing. The other tourist groups started coming up the path, so I packed up my gear, keeping a close eye on my toes in relation to that turtle’s mouth, and we all headed back to the panga.
A pretty special experience.
At this point of the trip, Day 6, everyone on the boat was sick, including us. The afternoon snorkel was in an area of relatively strong current, in the coldest water of the trip, and with everyone feeling weak, the rest of the group decided to rest up. And so it was that just my wife and I headed out with Tui and Monica for the afternoon snorkel.
The waves were quite strong, back and forth, to and fro, and all you can really do in that situation is not try and fight it – just relax and let yourself float with the water – just like the turtles! This was also the coldest of our snorkels, by far – that was expected as we were moving further south, but even with our wetsuits by the time we were back on the boat our hands and toes were ice cubes. You can see the strong currents in the vides – look at the way the plants swing strongly back and forth. Sometimes the turtles themselves get thrown about, but they don’t seem to care. With the cold and the strong currents, this was our shortest snorkel, planned for only 45 minutes. But we only lasted 27. The choppiness of the water, combined with the sunlight, provide some very nice lighting texture on the turtles, with alternating bands of light and dark dancing across their shells.
Our final excursion for the day was a dry landing on some rather fresh (100 years?) lava fields followed by a panga ride through the mangroves at Moreno Point. Our plan was to walk the mile or so across treacherous lava fields to some freshwater ponds to look for flamingos. Along the way, we got a good look at how plants start to colonize lava fields.
The first plants to put down roots are the Galapagos Lava Cactus, Brachycereus nesioticus, and we saw them scattered across every lava field we visited. It’s a pretty tough life for these cacti, but as there’s no soil to hold moisture, and with an extended dry season, it makes sense that cacti would be the first to try and forge a life here.
There were 2 ponds in the lava, the first of which had a single flamingo in a bad photographic position, while the second had 2, also in bad positions. We had the (quite unexpected!) opportunity to see flamingos close up a few days later.
After making the trek back across razor sharp lava, we took a panga ride through the mangroves. As usual, they did not disappoint. We quickly ran into a school of young rays. The polarizer was indispensable here; otherwise, you’d see a shiny reflection from the water with the hint that something was beneath the surface. My only regret is that I didn’t realize we’d go straight from the lava to the panga ride – so didn’t have my GoPro. I would have loved to have dropped the GoPro in and capture the gaggle underwater.
It was already a great day, but then the sunset pushed it over the top. We went out into the bay along some rocks that jutted out, and found some penguins, a sea lion, and a flightless cormorant – all lined up perfectly, on top of a crest of the rocks, to enable some stunning silhouettes.
Our panga driver was amazing, as usual. He’d line up the shot for us, then throttle the engine forward and backwards to slide the sun across the background, giving everyone on our panga a chance to get exactly the composition we wanted. At various times I was sitting up high, then leaning to the side and back to get really low – just trying to get the setting sun in a photographically appealing spot. I’m not generally fond of silhouettes, and it’s rare that I see one (let alone take one myself) that I like. This one isn’t bad, but it’s not a silhouette, per se. In fact, even though it looks like it was taken at night it wasn’t – during post-processing I realized it worked better in B+W, then adjusted to bring out the contrast. Which pushed it towards being a silhouette. Which just goes to show – I just don’t know what makes a compelling silhouette. And after I take one, it’s even harder for me to figure out how to process it, in particular how much to bury or pull out the shadows. For the most part, I just take what the camera gave me.
With all that said, I’m really, really happy with how some of these turned out. I’m particularly fond of the sea lion, in a perfect mermaid pose, because I caught that earlier, before the sun was really low, off to the side as the rest of the boat was focused on the cormorant we were maneuvering towards. You can’t quite tell from the photo, but the smooth lump on the left is another sea lion.
The flightless cormorant…
And the penguin.
Full gallery at the usual place. Forward to Day 7, back to Day 5.
