When
most people hear about the Galapagos they think about the Galapagos
tortoises - for good reason. You might remember 'Lonesome George' who
died in 2012 and was thought to be over a hundred years old. He was all
over the Galapagos Islands in various forms, sculptures as part of
landscape architecture, miniatures in tourist shops and even had hotels
and bars named after him.
We sailed to the Galapagos Islands from the Atlantic side of Panama. This meant going through the Panama Canal which was an experience in itself and then did a day sail to one of the Las Perlas islands in Panama Bay called Contadora. After a two-week delay in an Anchorage opposite the only nudist beach in Panama we set off for the Galapagos which took us 10 days to reach.
The Galapagos Islands are a group of islands which have been born of volcanoes slowly rising from the sea. They are in various states of Ascension which means that some are quite old islands and some are still very new and simply consist of lava flows.
We anchored in Peurto Villamil off the south coast of the island Isabella. This is the biggest Galapagos island and is home to 5 defunct volcanoes. Apparently there were five species of tortoise, one for each of these volcanoes.
The tortoises apparently arrived on the Galapagos by drifting 600 miles from the South American coast on vegetation rafts or just on their own - it's hard to imagine! There were apparently 14 separate populations on 10 of the largest Galapagos Islands - this according to the Galapagos website.
There were once something like 250,000 tortoises on these islands and today this has dropped to something like 20,000 - 25,000. The large drop in numbers is mainly due to the foraging activities of hungry sailors and pirates who discovered that they could keep tortoises on board their ships without feeding them for up to a year meaning they had a ready supply of fresh meat for themselves.
These days tortoise populations are carefully conserved but are still at the mercy of introduced predators and problems such as a couple of species of rats who pinch their eggs and heavy footed wild cows and goats and dogs and cats and all sorts of other domestic animals that go wild or run around on the loose. Most of this is due to man's thoughtless activity and you have to remember that the Galapagos Islands have only been protected since the early 60s.
We sailed to the Galapagos Islands from the Atlantic side of Panama. This meant going through the Panama Canal which was an experience in itself and then did a day sail to one of the Las Perlas islands in Panama Bay called Contadora. After a two-week delay in an Anchorage opposite the only nudist beach in Panama we set off for the Galapagos which took us 10 days to reach.
The Galapagos Islands are a group of islands which have been born of volcanoes slowly rising from the sea. They are in various states of Ascension which means that some are quite old islands and some are still very new and simply consist of lava flows.
We anchored in Peurto Villamil off the south coast of the island Isabella. This is the biggest Galapagos island and is home to 5 defunct volcanoes. Apparently there were five species of tortoise, one for each of these volcanoes.
The tortoises apparently arrived on the Galapagos by drifting 600 miles from the South American coast on vegetation rafts or just on their own - it's hard to imagine! There were apparently 14 separate populations on 10 of the largest Galapagos Islands - this according to the Galapagos website.
There were once something like 250,000 tortoises on these islands and today this has dropped to something like 20,000 - 25,000. The large drop in numbers is mainly due to the foraging activities of hungry sailors and pirates who discovered that they could keep tortoises on board their ships without feeding them for up to a year meaning they had a ready supply of fresh meat for themselves.
These days tortoise populations are carefully conserved but are still at the mercy of introduced predators and problems such as a couple of species of rats who pinch their eggs and heavy footed wild cows and goats and dogs and cats and all sorts of other domestic animals that go wild or run around on the loose. Most of this is due to man's thoughtless activity and you have to remember that the Galapagos Islands have only been protected since the early 60s.
