More Galapagos

I´ve been offline a couple of days because we´ve been on some pretty remote islands. We visited Floreana island that has a very small human population (around 100) and a very intriguing history. Several German families were drawn to the island in the early 1900s to live an ascetic life...then a baroness came with three lovers and plans to build a 5 star hotel. The German families vetoed her plans..and then the lovers got into disputes (having no possibility of cooperating on a project to please the baroness) and ultimately did each other in. Before then, the island was a hide-out for pirates who helped themselves to the huge tortoises (which provided oil and portable food for those long sea journeys).

These days there is a rather spartan hotel on the island (which we stayed at) and a tortoise reserve. It was the closest to a desert island paradise that I´ve ever seen. While I could imagine just sitting on the edge of the sea for weeks, writing up a storm and engaging in the sort of ascetic life those German families sought, we were scheduled to leave the next day for Isabella Island.

Isabella has about 2,500 human inhabitants and a gradually increasing population of tortoises. Five different subspecies are being bred so as to repopulate those that were destroyed by pirates and a maniacal farmer named Antonio Gil. So why repopulate the island with slow-growing tortoises? Obviously it´s not for their meat nor their fat nor their speed. Simply it´s for tourism. "Galapagos" means giant tortoise...and thus they must be restored! And all of those goats that have inhabitated tortoise niches are in the process of being eradicated. There is no such thing as a pristine ecological niche. All that they are doing here is re-creating a vision of one!

Today we rode horses and then hiked along the lava flows of several of the volcanoes that have formed this island. It´s the largest of the Galapagos Islands and amazingly diverse. This morning we were in a light rain storm up amongst the still-warm volcanoes...and then descending we passed through coffee plantations...and then finally back to the edge of the sea with beautiful beaches.