Mojito Island

Thursday September 4th, 2014.

Santa Cruz, Santiago, and Bartholomew Islands, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

Its 5:30am and we are slowly waking for our last full day in the Galapagos. We need to be ready for our bus by 6am. Today we will visit Bartholomew Island, with a bonus side trip to Santiago Island. Again, we are the first hotel on the bus pick up route; we sit quietly as we are driven across Santa Cruz Island to our yacht-for-the-day. Once we arrive, we both order dock coffee and by 7am we are off!

It will take a few hours to get to our first destination (which is Bartholomew Island). Most of the crowd sits quietly inside. Laura and I, however, are stubborn Texans and insist on sitting outside even though the wind and the sun are ferocious.

By mid-morning we are disembarking. At first Bartholomew looks very barren. Upon second look, it is actually barren. This is a good example of a “young” island. There are many strange rock formations, but few plants and animals. The rock formations are still relatively new (geologically speaking), so we have to walk around on a wooden boardwalk. Despite the lack of vegetation, the lava lizards live happily here. After a brief nature talk, we head up a few flights of steps to get one of the greatest island views of all time. Bartholomew turned out to be okay, after all.

Our next stop is Santiago Island for another hike and a viewing of a very large colony of sea lions. In stark contrast to Bartholomew, Santiago has a lot of wildlife. The landscape is very dry, but there are tons of birds and all of their nests are on the ground (you can do that, when you have no predators). There are also plenty of land iguanas. As we continue our hike we approach a large colony of sea lions and seals. It is explained to us that sea lions are brown and “walk” on their flippers, whereas, seals are black and “scoot” using their flippers. Honestly, I can’t always tell the difference. As we approach the colony we are overwhelmed by smell and sound. These animals definitely stink.

The colony is pretty active with sea lions constantly slipping in and out of the water. They alternate between sunning themselves on the rocks and diving into the water to eat and cool off. Every once in while two of them start to fight, but it’s always quickly resolved (I guess there’s really nothing to fight about). Once we’ve had our fill of sea lions and bird’s-nests-on-the-ground, we all load back on the boat for lunch.

Lunch is okay, but not as good as yesterday. It consists of chicken, a few veggies and a whole bunch of rice. After lunch we take the little speed boat to the beach for our opportunity to snorkel and, potentially, see the Galapagos penguins (we will actually not see penguins, but its okay because a whole bunch of other cool stuff is about to happen). 

Snorkeling off the beach at Bartholomew is pretty awesome. Immediately we see all sorts of colorful fish swimming in unison. There are also a few very large fish hanging out near the ground, maybe 10 feet or so from the surface. Next we see a very playful sea lion doing spins and flips under water. I am kind of scared (they are bigger and faster than you think), but I survey our tour crowd and calculate that my odds of being the one to get mauled by a sea lion are pretty low. 

We continue to float around, admiring to vast underwater world. Soon I see one of the marine iguanas drop into the water from a ledge above, swim around the surface for a few minutes, dive to the bottom, attach himself to a rock, and start eating algae. This is so cool. The Galapagos have the only marine iguanas in the whole world. They can hold their breath for up to one hour while they feed on algae underwater and once they resurface they shoot highly concentrated salt water out of a spout on their heads. I watch the iguana for a while before I finally fulfill my tourist duty and call everyone else over to see (I figure that he’s not going anywhere).

Eventually I get cold and decide to opt for beach time before re-boarding the yacht. The sun is warm and the view is beautiful. I am really going to miss these islands. 

Soon we are called back to the boat. They are selling beer and despite the incredibly choppy ride over, we decide that beer is a good idea. As we are leaving the island and the waves begin to hit our boat, one of the guides tells Laura and I that we can shimmy our way over to the front of the yacht (requiring us to walk along a very narrow ledge) to get a better view. As I am saying no-thank-you-we’ll-stay-in-the-back-and-not-shimmy-anywhere, Laura has already scuttled to the front. I sigh and follow. I am clutching the boat with one hand and my beer with the other. Terrified to let go of either.

At first the front of the boat is pretty cool. We can lay in the sun, the view is amazing and we have the whole front deck to ourselves. Soon, though, the water becomes unbelievably choppy. We are holding on to the boat for dear life and are apparently stuck here until conditions improve. Our perspectives of the situation alternate from total fear to hilarity (the beer is helping!). 3 hours and 1 nasty sunburn later the boat is slowing for its approach into Santa Cruz Island. We shimmy to the back of the boat and watch our ascent to the big dock. This is our last yacht trip and we are already nostalgic.

Once we are back on dry land, we board the bus to head back into town. About halfway back, I notice that the bus driver is driving like an actual maniac. He is on the shoulder of the left side of the road and traveling at 50 mph, easily. I assume that he must know what he is doing, but it turns out that he does not. We are all jolted out of our island daze when the driver suddenly slams on the breaks and swerves out of the shoulder. We see a small truck with a family of 5; they are stopped directly in front of us, and are justifiably angry. Words are exchanged and our bus driver eventually takes off again. The passengers remain silent; that was an uncomfortably close call.

As we are about to enter town, Laura and I make dinner plans with a nice Canadian couple that we met on the boat. They are probably 7-8 years younger than us and are really, really friendly. At dinner we all chat about our lives back home. Laura and I order some mojitos (it took me almost 3 days to succumb to the fact that the mojito is the only decent cocktail on this island. Laura somehow intuitively knew this coming in... she is the more experienced traveler, after all).

Dinner is pretty tame and we part ways with our new friends afterwards. Laura and I are determined to find (and/or create) some nightlife in this town. Now that we both know rum is the only acceptable beverage, we start exploring various venues. We eventually end up at an outside table of an empty restaurant. Our dedicated waiter brings us several rounds as we debrief about our time in the Galapagos. Around midnight the town is totally dead and we head back to the hotel. 

This is our last night here; tomorrow we will fly back to Quito.