I've watched a playful pair of sea lions play 'keep away' with our guides (eventually the guides won, but they sea lions gave them a good challenge). I’ve seen
the finches that inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution. I’ve seen blue-footed
boobies, red-footed boobies, Nazca boobies, frigate birds, Galapagos herons, flamingos,
oyster catchers, giant tortoises, waved albatross doing their mating dance, swallowtail gulls, marine
iguanas, flightless cormorants, yellow land iguanas, lava lizards, Sally Lightfoot crabs, sea lions, flamingos, penguins, and more. I've visited several
islands populated only by wildlife.
As I look back on this trip,
on all I saw and learned, I feel a little better about the time it's taken me
to write about it. I cannot formulate a
swift summary of my visit to the Galapagos.
And now we’re coming to the
end of our trip . We leave Espanola for
our last night on the Letty, and will end our trip where we started, on San
Cristobal.
We visit the Interpretation Center,
opened in 1997. I wouldn’t have appreciated this place before. There is a scale model of the islands with
glass representing the sea. Above the ‘sea’, islands rise no more than 350
feet. Below the water surface, there is as much as 6000
feet of volcanic island.
 |
| Interpretation Center Model of the Galapagos |
Just five of the islands have
a ‘full-time’ human population and San Cristobal, one of the oldest islands
and the furthest east, is one of them.
The Interpretation Center offers a chance to review
what I’ve learned about the islands. They were born over a hot spot where tectonic
plates collide, giving birth to volcanos that form islands that float along
these moving plates, away from their ‘birthplace’, making room for a new island
to form. All this is happening where
four ocean currents converge; currents from drastically different environments
in the four corners of the Pacific. The result
is unique and diverse life that adapts to its home, life that still amazes me.
The Center is an excellent
resource. But after all I have seen, this day is anti-climactic. This is the end of my visit to these amazing
islands.
