Tales from the Trail (and Places I've Been): Return to San Cristobal, the End of Our Galapagos Visit

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.

In the early afternoon, we board a flight to Quito, where this adventure began less than two weeks ago.

Quito at Night

It’s bittersweet to be here. We await the plane, board, fly to Quito.

We return to the hotel that began our trip. When we were here last week, we found it funny that country music was playing in the hotel dining room. They’re still playing country music in the hotel dining room.

Tomorrow we leave for Peru and Machu Picchu.

A Little Photo Review