Galapablog Day 2: San Cristobal

Galapagos Islands, Ecuador - San Cristobal, Friday 10th May

Our first full day on the Galapagos Islands started out with an introduction to kayakking and after an initial spurt of highly unco-ordinated paddling, we found sealions diving under our kayak as we made our way around the headland, encountering pelicans, "Sally Lightfoot" crabs (which I will always associate with the Prodigy album cover), frigate birds and one of the symbols of the islands, blue-footed boobies (not just a plummetting diving bird, with very bright blue feet, but also a great opportunity to sell all manner of "I love boobies" merchandise, naturally).

Unlike many visitors to the islands, we stayed at various hotels on the islands, rather than staying on a cruise ship and visiting the islands on day trips - this had the advantage of putting money into the islands' economies although maybe meant that we saw less of the farther flung islands than the cruisers. We were constantly surprised by how unruffled the animals and birds were by human presence and how little they stirred, even when we walked right past them.

In the afternoon, we had two walks - the first to el Junco, a freshwater lagoon surrounded by plants and ferns that have adapted to San Cristobal and the second to the Opuntia (cactus) forest.

The highlights of the first walk (up a hill on a slightly decrepit wooden walkway) were the views across the island and the constant wheeling overhead of the frigate birds, who skim across the surface of the freshwater to get the salt off their wings after hanging around at the seaside to steal fishes off other fishing birds. Having grown up with a book of birds which featured a big photo of a male frigate bird with an inflated red neck pouch, it was a special moment for me to see these exotic birds swooping down into the water, dipping their wings and shaking off the water, whilst taking care to not get too wet so that they were still able to soar up into the sky again.

The second walk through the cactus forest was another bird-spotting opportunity, although the birds in question this time tended to be mockingbirds, the ubiquitous yellow warblers and various finches, flitting about on the different types of cactus and native plants, including the Galapagos cotton plants and presumably avoiding the poisonous apple trees, whose fruit is harmless to giant tortoises but deadly to everything else. Unfortunately we did not have the time to walk along the trail all the way to the beach, but still saw plenty of plants and birds and picked up lots of persistently sticky seeds en route.