Tuesday, April 22

I awoke at about 5:30 AM as we approached our anchorage off of Bartolome Island. Because I could not get back to sleep, I dressed and headed up to the observation deck. Once there, I took some videos of the morning light beginning to wash over the dun colored outlines of the island. Remember, on the equator, it is quite dark until just before sunrise at about 6 AM, then the scene rapidly becomes flooded with light. (Another note for the reader. During this trip I took about four hours of video. I have not yet watched even a minute of it. Maybe once this journal is complete, I will spend the next year reviewing and editing it.)

As I headed down from the observation deck to the boat deck, I was rewarded by the view of one young lady(?) occupying a cabin on the boat deck who did not seem to think it necessary to draw her window curtains while dressing. Although I only caught a brief glimpse and felt it gauche to return to verify my observation, her cabin was directly on the crew’s path to and from the bridge, so I am sure she had frequent admirers.

This morning’s island is Bartolome – two eroded volcanic cones linked by a narrow spit. It is really just a subsidiary of its larger neighbor island, Santiago. Because of its compact, eerie nature, Bartolome is a favorite Galápagos excursion stop to emphasize the unworldliness of the Islands. But to teach this rule, it seems to be an atypical example. The other islands that we have visited have been covered by vegetation. Not very lush vegetation given the scarcity of water, but vegetation nonetheless. In contrast, Bartolome is perfectly bare – nothing but nude brown cinders and lava.

As our panga nears the landing pier, our eyes follow the trail up to the summit of the larger of the two cones. It starts with a trek over the ash, up the gradually sloping lower reaches of the cone, and as the declination builds, it devolves into a series of switchbacks, punctuated by many wooden staircases.

The moment we land on the stone jetty, the newbies in the panga begin to ooh and aah because one or two marine iguanas are basking on the nearby rocks. For us veterans of Isabela, Fernandina and Espanola, this sparse display isn’t worth unpacking the Pentax for. Thus, we immediately begin our trudge upward across the loose volcanic sand. Even though it is only 8 AM, the heat is already debilitating. We pick our way through a tilted landscape of splatter cones, ropey lava flows and intact and collapsed lava tubes. The photography/video crew has already staked out a makeshift set at one of the observation stops along the trail. We curse the fact that due to the filming, we cannot stop to rest here. Given that they are doing video, we are also supposed to be quiet – but I think our panting can be heard from some distance. Serves them right.

As the cone steepens, we arrive at the base of the 372 wooden stairs that lead to the summit. As we go higher and reach the ridgeline below the summit, we pick up a little breeze that makes the climb somewhat more bearable. From this ridge you command a view of both the east and west sides of the island. It matches that seen on some of the most popular travel posters for the Galápagos and includes views of Bartolome’s famous Pinnacle Rock.

Another hundred meters and a final staircase or two gets us to the summit. While it’s not too hard an ascent, it would have been easier if Barbara and I could have just focused on the climb, and not had to adjudicate several altercations and sitdown strikes by the boys – who are, of course, more fit and capable of the slog than us middle-agers. Indeed, I am proud to say that Mom completed it with flying colors, while a good number of the older members of the cruise dropped out at the lower rest areas.

The view from the summit provides the juxtaposition of a brown volcanic moonscape, lapped by blue waters – kind of like the classic “Earthrise, the Moon” photograph taken by Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve, 1968 – except that on Bartolome the two worlds abut each other rather than being separated by a quarter of a million miles. In addition to this natural scenery, there is also a large monument commemorating the construction of the trail to the summit.

The walk down the cone goes quickly and we soon arrive back at the jetty. Here, we reboard pangas for an excursion along Bartolome’s coastline. Not too much of interest, just a couple of sea lions and a large number of Sally Lightfoot crabs. Just barely adequate to pique the interest even of the newbies. Shortly, we land on a beach that occupies the eastern side of the narrow spit of land connecting Bartolome’s two lobes. We hike over the dune that separates our beach from the beach on western side of the spit. Here, Pierre is pointing out a pair of white-tipped reef sharks that are patrolling in the shallow waters right off the beach. One quickly disappears, but the other stays – circling and circling in an oblong pattern. He (or she – I wasn’t getting close enough to tell) is only about fifteen feet offshore, and the water is so shallow his dorsal fin and tail generally are out of the water. After a while, we get tired of watching the circling, and head back over the dunes to our (hopefully shark-free) landing beach.

Here the water is the warmest we have experienced in the islands – which is good, because neither Barbara nor I have brought our wet suits for today’s snorkeling. Given the morning’s logistics, to have brought them we would have had to have worn them all morning. And climbing to the top of Bartolome’s volcanic cone while wearing a (s)wet suit was just not on the preferred agenda. The most striking sea life here appears to be sea urchins. Not just the traditional green ball-like variety with spines, but also ones called pencil sea urchins that bristle with pencil-like appendages jutting out in all directions. While there are also a fair number of fish, none really captures my interest until a five foot reef shark cruises across my bow – about eight feet in front of me and a couple of feet below. Because I have my underwater camera at the ready, I was able to record this encounter on film, and have not had to endure spiteful taunts of, “oh sure, and just how large was ‘Jaws’?”

We spend some more time at beach climbing along the rocks. The boys are excited to find that under practically every rock that they turn over, there is some crab or other sea creature that scuttles out. Unfortunately, this leads to some rocks being thrown and other unruliness. We catch the last panga of the morning back to the Santa Cruz.

During lunch, the ship motors around Santiago Island to Puerto Egas on its western shore. Because of the boys’ out-of-control behavior on the beach and during lunch in the Jacuzzi, Barbara decides that they should stay aboard the boat during this afternoon’s excursion. Thus, Mom and I go ashore while Barbara stays with the boys as they watch videos for the afternoon.

This afternoon’s landing is wet on a black volcanic sand beach. It is at the site of a habitation on Santiago Island where an entrepreneur named Hector Egas operated a salt mine for some number of years in the mid-1900s. Most of the structures are now gone, but one can still see some concrete pads and a few old sheds. This location offers one of the very few flat cleared areas on the Islands, and the crew of the Santa Cruz have already appropriated it for an intramural soccer game that continues throughout the duration of our landing.

Our walk along the shoreline is short but rather difficult. We have to pick our way across flows of ropey lava that have numerous large fissures and quick changes in height. Because of filming by the publicity crew, we are forced to walk a bit more inland, where the footing on these lava flows is a bit less even than out closer to the shore where tidal action has had the opportunity to eroded the flow into greater smoothness.

We see many sea lions and marine iguanas. These marine iguanas are smaller and more delicately featured than the ones we have seen in the western islands. They are notable for the clean lines of the salt encrusted “crowns” that top their heads and the defined spines that run down their backs. The crowns look a good deal like Lisa or Bart Simpson’s hair, but white rather than yellow.

The real treat here is that we see marine iguanas swimming rather than just basking. A number of them are moving off of a rocky outcropping offshore that is about to be inundated by the arriving tide. They scrabble down to the water’s edge, and wait for a rising wave to sweep them into the sea. They then swim the ten meters to the shore where they wait for another wave to dash them up onto the rocks. If they are lucky, their claws find enough purchase to scramble up above the tidal zone before the next wave hits. Only a few make it on the first attempt. Most suffer being battered against the rocks by two or three successive waves before their landing meets with success.

Sally Lightfoot crabs are everywhere here, and their colors range from dull green to a brilliant iridescent orange. Our guide Kiki takes some time to discuss the cannibalistic habits of these scavengers and the pugilistic aggression they display towards other crabs and the style they employ in using their claws for fighting. Conveniently, there is one bully crab right in front of us who assists in the lecture by demonstrating his aversion to about a half a dozen of his brethren that have the impudence to wish to occupy the same several square meter section of rock.

The shoreline here is punctuated by numerous mini-fjords and pools. Sea lion pups play endlessly in many of them – knocking each other off ledges and chasing around obstacle courses of foam as the inrushing waves violently fill and drain the top three or four feet of water volume in the pools. One of the mini-fjords is spanned by natural rock bridge. This bridge is about four meters long and a meter wide. Although these are ample enough dimensions, it still takes some nerve to cross – especially since the rock surface is smooth and a bit wet from the spray. But we are both successful.

On our way back to the landing beach, we spy two Galápagos hawks perched in a tree. We board the waiting panga and arrive back on the Santa Cruz after another full day of adventure. Happily, the boys seem to have calmed down a bit after their afternoon on board. After dinner we go up to the top deck to look at the stars, but clouds obscure most of the view.