Island Lives

Dear Chasing the Sun reader, I thought I should bring your attention to a funky new feature on this blog. Please note the picture of the cake with the map (kindly provided by my work colleagues on my last day  at work before setting off to chase the sun) on the right hand side your screen. Click on the cake to be taken to an interactive google map of my journey so far. I hope you like it. If you have any comments, then please let me know. And thanks for staying with me!

Lost again, this time on Mark’s bike! I have ended up at the back-end of Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz – the main settlement of the Galapagos Islands and the focus of much that happens here. This gives me cause to pause for thought about the place and the people who live here.

The town has grown rapidly over the past 30 years or so from a couple of thousand people to over 20,000 today. Until recently, there was no permanent population on these islands; permanent residents are either in-comers or their recent descendants. They arrive mainly as economic migrants from Ecuador’s mainland and are here to try and improve their and their family’s lives in one of the richest parts of the country.

A small fishing industry provides another livelihood option for some islanders

Local economic wealth is built firmly on the foundations of the island’s natural wealth. The iconic animals, fascinating environment and scientific tradition attract approaching 200,000 tourists per year, up from around 2,000 in the 1960s. This is a high-end tourism destination for, mainly wealthy North Americans and Europeans. This weekend, however, is a national public holiday so there are many mainland Ecuadorians here for the beaches, taking advantage of the much cheaper internal flights available to nationals. The crime rate here is very low, which must be due to the plethora of police in sparkling, new trucks generally not doing very much. Occasionally they ‘race’ down the main street at 15 miles per hour, lights flashing to pull someone over for no obvious reason.

The influx of tourists and economic migrants inevitably creates pressure on the environment, as highlighted briefly in previous blogs. I am also interested in how the people who find themselves here, either temporarily or permanently, interact in this unlikely promised land. I have been told that there is no culture here and that residents are only interested in extracting money and don’t care about their fragile environment. There is some of that too, but opening one’s eyes, you can see the germination of an interesting mix of (the inevitable) western culture, religion, and the sense of place derived proudly from its natural wonders.

It is obvious that the further you move from the sea-front the poorer the housing becomes. Expensive hotels, shops and restaurants give way increasingly to shacks of plastic and wood in a few hundred metres, finally merging into skeletal tracks through the bush delimiting a new area being prepared for the expansion of Puerto Ayora, ceded by the national park for this purpose.

The town’s architecture is an eclectic collection of low-rise buildings in various stages of construction or destruction, from the Gaudi-esque to the Birmingham multi-storey. Giant public sculptures exaggerate the scale of even the giant tortoise and many shop-fronts, walls and footpaths are decorated with islands iconography. This illustrates, evidently, at least some awareness of the local environment and of its value – the flagship species – particularly t-shirts with various plays on the word ‘booby’ , coral reef life and Charles Darwin.






Who does this remind you of?

Yes, Darwin, Victorian, one of the greatest minds ever and, here at least, the world's first rock-and-roll scientist! In Galapagos he is the supreme icon; eponymous streets and buildings are everywhere, his name appears on restaurant menus and, despite his impact on the way humanity perceives itself and religion, here he is given almost god-like status in some displays, while in others he is portrayed as the beret wearing Che Guavara – Evolution Revolution!

And this?

Alongside all this are lots of churches – mostly small and quite non-descript and appearing on almost every street. They appear to be mostly Seventh Day Adventists. I don’t profess to know much about this branch of christianity (or any other to be honest), but it lives cheek by jowl with the Darwin – Galapagos – Evolution reality that exists here. I wonder what Christian fundamentalists from North America in particular would make of this apparent acceptance by society of both in the home of evolution.

I’m an optimist and, after only a week in the Galapagos, I can see a germinal environmental awareness allied to an appreciation of the basis for tourism, which is the mainstay of the islanders' existence. The constant, international, environmental spotlight on the islands adds a third dimension. There is a government strategy for the Galapagos Islands to become completely sustainable by 2060. I would love to be able to come back in 50 years (at the age of 94), with a long, white beard, to see if it really has.