Imagine first setting foot on an alien planet.
A rough barrage of waves defends the oasis of glassy water you are now cruising through. Your vessel is a fishing boat, artfully steered here by missionary experienced in navigating the hostile ocean. Drinking in your first sites of this strange paradise, your existing preconceptions of what is possible on Earth are challenged by the odd juxtaposition off features that surround.
How is it possible that the cascades of black lava rock peeking above the surface, are also topped by turrets of cacti? Why would tiny penguins be lounging in the sunshine beneath them? As the boat weaves through the maze of porous rock, you contrast them with their fancy-looking neighbours. The gulls are called blue footed boobies, after their bright enamel covered feet. Sea lions, already familiar friends from your time on the mainland, worry scarlet zapata crabs as they play in the water. Salt-encrusted ignuanas don’t even flinch in their leathery skin as you pass by, staying stuck to their rocks with stoically unimpressed expressions. Around this resemblance of a poorly thought out zoo exhibition, the air is still and quiet, carving only ripples across the water’s surface.
Incredibly, Los Tuneles are not a sight which can only be witnessed on Mars. Its a safe haven in a remote region of the world, 1000km off the coast of Ecuador. An hour’s boat ride from Isla Isabela, the site forms just one puzzle piece of the incredible natural phenomena that is the Galapagos Islands. The isolated terrain shelters a diversity of endemic animal and plant species, which were the major inspiration behind Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. With no natural predators (until the unfortunate arrival of man), the Galapagos is the most highly protected area I’ve ever had the privilege of visiting. The islands are seemingly removed from the pressures and noise ever-present to the rest of the planet, fragile as their existence may feel.
Learning from the accounts of several guides, I concluded that most things can be reliably labelled as a Galapagos/Lava/Darwin something-or-other here. The three species of booby derived their name from their presumed stupidity, as when people first visited the island, the birds had no prior experience of being hunted, and would stand dumbly as hungry sailors snatched them up. Darwin himself commented on the bizarre behaviour of iguanas, which he “threw several times as far as I [he] was able”, and “would invariably return in a direct line to the spot where I [he]stood”.
The experience just got more surreal after we left the boat. From our vantage point on top of a lava arch, we waited only minutes to spot several enormous Green turtles glide underneath, escaping into the shallow sanctuary to sleep. The one thing my dad wanted from the trip was to see a turtle. Having lost count of the number we saw just days into the holiday, the experience reminds me of being in safari. On day one, everyone is over the moon to see a zebra, or an elephant. By the end of the week, it is more like ‘hey, another zebra. What’s new?’. Far from just counting them, we were about to get closer than you would think possible, to more turtles than should reasonably be able to fit in water barely 2m deep.
Kitted out with masks and snorkels, we dropped into the water and prepared to follow our ever-cheerful guide ‘Seabass’ into an ethereal world. The site is too shallow for diving, but its not difficult to appreciate why it ranks as one of the top spots for snorkelling in the world. There was more diversity of life in this one trip than I’ve seen in countless excursions since. Fleets of sting rays, spotted eagle rays, and velvety golden rays soared past us, amongst a pick and mix suspension of colourful fish, eels, seahorses, flatfish, and a myriad of minuscule shrimp-like forms.
More surprises awaited under the shade of a tunnel. Arms flat against my sides, I was guided into the blackness by my flipper, and told to tap when I wanted to come out. It took a moment to adjust from the bright sun outside, and see what could possibly be worth looking at that could match the kaleidoscope of colour in the open water. Then I began to pick out shadowy forms on the ocean floor.
I’m no stranger to swimming with sharks. I’ve chased small reef sharks along walkways in the Maldives, and been smothered by gentle nurse sharks in Belize. But I’ve never been hypnotised looking into the eyes of big white-tipped sharks like this. The sharks we found here were 2m long, and it was the first time I’ve felt in awe in the presence of a truly wild predator. Knowing full-well that the sharks are peaceful isn’t enough to quieten the instinct telling you to remain perfectly still in their presence. When I eventually tapped to come out, I discovered that several sharks had passed underneath and right next to me without me even knowing, whilst I was transfixed by their friends resting in the shadows. As a pretend biology student, I’m obviously a wildlife lover- but I’ve been fascinated by sharks in particular from a young age. I need to dive with big sharks sometime in the future. I don’t know if its possible to completely used to their presence, but I hope I never do.
Stunned by the realisation that without a guide, we would never have known the sharks were even here with us, we moved back into the warmer water in the sun. After a bit more nosying around, this time in the tangled mangrove roots that adorned part of the site, we prepared to leave. But I soon forgot about my fingers, puckered from being in the water so long, when we came face to face with the turtles.
The locals are very strict about respecting the wildlife in the Galapagos, to the extent that nobody is allowed to move islands without every bag being thoroughly searched, to check nobody tries to make off with a penguin or an iguana. One of the major rules is that you can’t touch to wildlife, on land or in the water. But the turtles we met next didn’t really give us a choice. Four enormous, fully grown individuals had crammed themselves into a small enclosure, grazing on tufts of weed with their beak-like mouths. They were totally unphased by us being there, oblivious to our amazement as they attacked their meal with enthusiasm. Without moving at all, we had somehow become stuck in a kind of turtle traffic jam, with flippers and shells brushing past us as they splashed around in the shallows. The water was barely deep enough to cover my knees when I stood up, and the ridges of their shells glistened above the surface. I don’t think we even got any good photos, since they were too close to even get in the shot. We might have some snaps of my brother smushed up against a shell at close range, but that’s about it.
So, a bizarre environment, in a remote and challenging location to access, with a strange assortment of species living alongside each other. Los Tuneles may as well have been an extraterrestrial experience, for the distinctly separate and special place it has in my mind. I’ve never been as overwhelmed by the extent of people’s caring and genuine concern for preserving the wildlife and pristine environment as in Ecuador.
In what can feel like a hopeless and depressing time to be alive, its too easy to sit by and watch the most fantastic natural phenomena suffer from our disrespectful way of existing. Yet this strange and beautiful string of islands in the Pacific gives me hope. The people in the Galapagos are doing all they can, to balance sharing their beautiful surroundings with the outside world, whilst protecting it from the dangers of doing so. The major threat here is not so much from within, as from the large scale effects of global warming and pollution. It seems brutally unfair that after all their efforts, at this rate, the locals will likely be let down by the excessive consumption and disregard for nature of the rest of the world, invading even the most precious of sanctuaries from far away. I only hope that it is not too late for humanity to get its act together, and that the beauty of the Galapagos will be allowed to remain pristine for a long time to come.
Just Rambles 