Breakfast with the Darwins

Excitement buzzes like a swarm of bees through the plane as we near our destination, after a drawn-out stopover in Ecuador’s Guayaquil airport. The plane is packed with a broad selection of nationalities, including many Eucadorians too. Peeking through scant holes in the cloud blanket, the first of the Galapagas Islands comes into sight – everyone cranes their necks for a better view. I’m in an aisle seat, so give up trying.

I first became aware of these extraordinary islands in the late 1970s during the original showing of David Attenborough’s landmark Life on Earth series. The breathless naturalist captured me completely with his captivating illustration of Darwin’s revolutionary work on evolution and the role of these islands in changing humanity’s view of itself. I never thought I would ever get the chance to visit them but I now have the means, thanks to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, and a good reason.

The unique biology of these arid islands arises from their oceanic volcanic origins and their thousand kilometres distance from the South American continent, from which they have always been isolated. Until only very recently in history, the only animal and plant species that occurred there were those that had floated, flown or blown there from across the sea, then evolving rapidly into new species to fill the ecological spaces that were available, ultimately creating a unique take on island life.

Literal interpretation of a Galapagos Islands wall map

The plane lands on the sparsely vegetated, small desert island of Baltra. The island hosted a US Air Force base during the Second World War and beyond, so this infrastructure was adapted for civilian use after the military departed (you can still see the concrete foundations of the buildings among the dry vegetation). There is a lot of rigmarole about checking tourists’ bags for unexpected or undeclared plant or animal material in case more invasive species are inadvertently introduced. I’m not convinced that this is too effective given that the golden retriever, which is supposed to be sniffing our neatly lined up bags for biological contraband before we can collect them, is more interested in playing with a tennis ball!

This unique natural wonder is now threatened from two main directions: rampant ,invasive, exotic species of animals and plants, introduced by deliberately or inadvertently by humans, which consume or outcompete the native wildlife; and development as the population of the islands and the number of visitors continues to expand mercilessly. At the time of Attenborough’s programme there were around 10,000 visitors; there are now around 200,000 all needing food, water, somewhere to sleep, trinkets to buy, waste disposal and means of getting around. The islands’ ecology has not evolved to cope with such pressures and in many instances is suffering. I am in the islands for a few days to try and understand these pressures and what is being done to restore the ecological damage. (I will expand on this more in the next couple of blogs.)

The dog has finally done its job and, bags collected, we get on a bus for a short journey to the “canal” - a narrow sea channel between Baltra and the main island of Santa Cruz. Here we catch a five-minute ferry ride, with our bags stacked precariously on top of the ferry waiting to topple into the drink, then unload and into taxis and buses for the 42km ride south over the extinct volcano which forms the island to Puerto Ayora – the main population centre of the Galapagos Islands.

Santa Cruz Island from the north - note small volcanic cones on the flanks of the main volcano

My taxi driver takes me through the small town as far as he can to the gates of the national park, beyond which cars aren’t allowed. I then have to trundle my enormous bag for about a mile to the Charles Darwin Research Station, where I am staying for the next few nights.

My accommodation is self-catering and rather on its own, surrounded by national park vegetation. I am only a stone’s through from the sea and can smell it and hear it as I lie there over the next few nights trying to ignore it and go to sleep; welcoming it in the morning as I awake. My room-mates are two little geckos pre-occupied with chasing each other, chirping and eating bugs.

I have arranged to meet up briefly with Mark – Australian – and the restoration ecology co-ordinator at the Charles Darwin Research Station. He is to be my mentor, guide and victim of my incessant questions for the duration of my stay here. We sink a couple of beers and then, pushing his bike, he gives me a brief tour of Puerto Ayora, showing me where to buy food and the like. Walking back in the blackness over a rough lava track in flip-flops, I’m trying to make sense of it all. It’s quite disorientating, this travel thing, suddenly getting whisked from one environment to a completely different one, in different time zones while desperately trying to act normal at the other end, and make sense of your own senses, notwithstanding all the fascinating information that you are bombarded with.

The next morning I rise and fix a simple breakfast, which I eat on my balcony, overlooking a coastal area of the national park. With a few seconds I am joined by three small, sparrow-sized birds keen to share my breakfast. They’re fearless and, over the next few days of getting to know me, will try and drink my coffee and pinch a sandwich from my hand. They are Darwin’s Finches. I wonder if they showed him more respect.