Isla Santa Cruz

Isla San Cristobal and Isla Santa Cruz. Less than forty miles separate them, but they are a world apart. My first impressions of Santa Cruz were far from great, but it has grown on me with time. Upon arrival here (Academy Bay) I was overwhelmed by the size and the touristy nature of the town (Puerto Ayora). Yes, San Cristobal was touristy, but walking down the streets this was never the first thing I noticed. As soon as I ventured ashore in Santa Cruz I felt the touristy atmosphere of the island, and the bigger-city feel of the town and was chased back to Avventura. The next day was no better as the float switch to my automatic bilge pump failed and I had to find a replacement in town and install it, working in the midday heat in nasty bilge water. Since my day was already ruined I tacked on the tedium of oil and fuel filter changes and didn’t even bother to head ashore.

But the earth continued turning and the new day brought much better experiences. Once past the touristy Malecon a different island presented itself. Fleeing the city life, I struck off for Bahia Totuga. A 2.5 km path winds through the vegetation of the region bringing you close to the large cacti which dot the landscape with birds flitting about and lizards spastically darting along the path, ever waiting till the last minute to move out of your way. The midday sun was beating down on the lava-rock path and as we reached the peak of a small hill the ocean beyond came into view beyond a blinding white sand beach. The clarity of the water and the whiteness of the sand provided amazing color contrasts as the seafloor fell away into the deep blue beyond. Tortuga Bay is a gorgeous half moon bay with tucked between two lava points and guarded behind by thick desert vegetation. The sand is a fine powder, and (hard as it is for me to compare the two incomparable places) was reminiscent of that in Gulf Shores, Alabama. The surf offshore was not much better than Gulf Shores either. A fifteen knot breeze swept along the shoreline and the waist high waves gently fell over on themselves; but the beauty of surfing is that none of this matters. I ditched my things on the beach and was quick to paddle out, and as soon as I duckdove the first wave all was right with the world again. The traumas of the previous day were a distant memory as I paddled to the empty lineup, turned shorewards, and admired the beauty of the desolate landscape. A few people were scattered about the long beach, but there were no homes adorning the hillsides and the bustling port was far away.

I was able to sneak into a few fun little waves before abandoning the water and walking the length of the beach, snapping photos as I went. Unfortunately Tortuga Bay is one of those places that cannot be captured in pictures alone. For one thing the beach is too wide and long to be captured in one frame, not to mention the fact that the camera doesn’t pick up the sounds and smells of the wildlife and vegetation, or the feel of the brutal equatorial sun being dampened by a breeze off the Humboldt-chilled water. I passed the afternoon reading the Autobiography of Charles Darwin on a gorgeous beach in the Enchanted Isles he made so famous and felt somehow close to the great naturalist.

As the sideshore wind continued for a second day I made my way to the “Charles Darwin Research Station” and spent a morning walking around the place. The Research Station is used to breed and raise baby tortoises and land iguanas which are then taken back to their native islands after they have reached a certain size. There are pens enclosing hordes of tiny tortoises separated into the island they came from, then there’s a communal cage where the tortoises are transferred after a couple years to learn to exist in more natural surroundings, after which they are returned to their native islands usually. There are a few exceptions. The next stop on the trail, for instance, brought me to the pen of “Lonesome George.” George is the last remaining member of the subspecies of tortoises from Isla Pinta and he was brought to the research center in the late 1970s in the hopes of finding him a suitable mate and either continuing his same species, or at least creating a new bloodline in close relation to the species. The problem is they have yet to find a female from the Pinta subspecies and George refuses to adulterate his blood. He spends his days in a pen with two female tortoises from a species closely related to him, but he refuses to mate with any tortoise outside his specie, and thus the Pinta subspecie appears doomed as George grows old.

After paying my respects to “Lonesome George” I walked through separate pens enclosing first female tortoises and then their gigantic male counterparts. It still surprises me how archaic the animals look. Looking into the eyes of the tortoise is like looking back to an era long past when reptiles ruled the earth. After the tortoises came the few land iguanas on display—massive iguanas of a reddish hue who were highly inactive and completely unconcerned with me.

Other than the Darwin Research Station all I wanted to see on Santa Cruz were the tourist sites up in the highlands. The opportunity arose on March 27th and Mike and I jumped at it. It all started the night before when Mike met a girl in a bar and the next morning we were headed ashore to do some kind of painting up in the highlands. All I knew was that it was my way up the hill. It turns out we were helping Galapagos ICE (www.galapagosice.org), a non-profit outfit, who was painting the inside of a school in the highland town of Santa Rosa. So we spent a couple hours throwing some fresh paint on a rundown school that needed a lot more than a superficial facelift, working alongside a dozen locals. I had a good time chatting with the locals and experienced the Ecuadorian work ethic firsthand. At one point I was painting a room with five locals when a man came in and said there were sandwiches for lunch. Immediately, almost in mid-stroke the locals cleared out of the room and went to lunch. Afterwards they lingered, did a bit more painting, and abandoned the endeavor in favor of a pick-up game of soccer on the basketball court of the school. Since the teams were uneven I somehow got dragged into the game and quickly realized my lack of any soccer skills; but in the end I didn’t hurt my team and we took the game 3-0.

In the early afternoon the painting was done and Mike and I along with Jill (the girl who roped Mike into the gig) and Ian from Afriki, were driven down to the Lava Tunnel. Our driver (a fellow painter) had called ahead and we were let in the tunnel for free, and descended into the center of the earth as it felt from the wrong direction, fighting against the flow of the pasty white tourists as we crawled through the low section of the tunnel and emerged into a massive lava tube. The tube was formed when the outer skin of the lava cooled first and the molten inside continued downhill, in the end forming a near-perfect tube that extended for a couple hundred yards before emerging into daylight once more.

After our stroll through the earth we were taken down to a local ranch where there are trails cut through the landscape and you can see tortoises in their natural habitat. Our luck was fairly good and we came across three gigantic tortoises, both hunkered in the bushes and strolling out in the open. It was a neat hike through the highland semi-forest, and after an hour of searching and nearly getting ourselves lost we returned to the entrance and were driven back down to sea level and left in Puerto Ayora. A little bit of work got us a lunch and visits to the tourist sites of the highlands as well as allowing us to meet the locals of the town and observe the Ecuadorians at work. It was a nice day.

All things considered Santa Cruz is nothing like San Cristobal, but has proven to be a wonderful stop on the continuing voyage. From here we will head south to Isla Santa Maria (Floreana) for a few days followed by a handful of days at Isla Isabella from whence we will take our leave for the Marquesas. The voyage is starting to move along and the sea is calling me back. I’m excited for the long passage which waits in the wings, and even more so to be heading for the south sea islands of many a man’s childhood dreams.

Pura Vida,
Scott Atkins

PS For the moment the “real world” has struck and I’m stuck in Santa Cruz at least another day trying to deal with the incompetence of modern man, but with a little luck the voyage will be moving on again soon.