Un milagro llamado Galápagos I
Me sentí astronauta al alunizar en la isla de Baltra. Cacti stood up like flags conquering planets. They were big cacti, weird and wild, there, in the middle of an archipelago that was out of the question, in the middle of nowhere, as if the galapagos were a big mistake.
A raft crossed us to the island of Santa Cruz, little by little the reception was softened with a little more vegetation. We arrived in Puerto Ayora, a town that finally humanized the island, with their perpetual summer houses, your dive sites, its restaurants smelling of ceviche and soursop juice. And with such perspectives we come out to meet a street that accompanies the Pacific. and it was there, on that boardwalk, where the first shock took place.
A man was cutting fish in a makeshift fish market. A pelican hovered around the fishmonger, several herons were waiting their turn and a sea lion had decided to take a nap on a nearby bank. The presence of the animals did not surprise me as much as their naturalness. It seemed too familiar a relationship for such disparate relatives.. It was a serene coexistence, only altered by the childish gestures of tourists.
They were big cacti, weird and wild, there, in the middle of an archipelago that was out of the question
Minutes after, a new spasm, a step back - in the style of Chiquito de la Calzada- to avoid stepping on our first iguana. I already knew that iguana, I had seen her before, it was the iguana from the documentary Baraka, the same one that escaped from the snakes on Planet Earth II, that was the iguana that had convinced Charles Darwin to certify his theory of Evolution, a black and scaled iguana, who always looks to infinity. I guess it's hard to explain how the sighting of some kind of lizard got me so excited.. For me it was more of a reunion, an outstanding debt that was settled in that corner of Puerto Ayora. Because that iguana only grows in the Galapagos Islands and it is necessary to fly for eleven hours to Guayaquil, drive several days to Quito, take another plane to the island of Baltra and approach the south coast of Santa Cruz to see its wrinkled head, his prehistoric profile, its imposing ugliness.
Sometimes, the traveler's happiness resides in the encounter with a reptile that dries in the sun, so oblivious to your joy that his disdain is offensive. but there i was, with tongue out, dumping the camera on a symbol of animal adaptation.
Sometimes, the traveler's happiness resides in the encounter with a reptile that dries in the sun
We had barely walked ten minutes and I already felt the shock of knowing that I was in an unrepeatable place., with extraordinary inhabitants who come out to meet you a few meters from the hostel where you would spend the night.
In Puerto Ayora everything is a little further, so it didn't take me long to enter the Charles Darwin Research Station. I forgot about the inquina of the sun, that way of embarrassing tourists, and I took out the camera to aim, indiscreet, to the copulation of a couple of turtles. Both desperate males of affection, making shadow between so much light.
However, it is advisable to leave the only town that appears on the maps of the island, to be seduced by nature without walls, no roads, nor any proportion. In El Chato, the hundred-year-old tortoises are much larger than those of the Scientific Station, as if freedom and the passage of time amplified his elephant legs, his light blue eyes and his vast shell. They do not avert their gaze or their way. They look at you without decorum, with a mouth full of fruits that they have no intention of sharing. It is the intruder who ends up surrendering to the empire of a giant reptile. It is the tourist who smiles between overwhelmed and fearful that that animal will suddenly stop being a herbivore, without knowing very well how to frame its dimensions.
It is the tourist who smiles between overwhelmed and fearful that that animal will suddenly stop being a herbivore
To reach the coast of Santa Cruz you have to follow a path guarded by cacti and plants that grow with the same anarchy as turtles. There are salty lagoons where a dozen sharks huddle together for a nap.. Their profiles are drawn underwater, turning the pond into a refuge for sharks and a nightmare for unsuspecting bathers. And "a little further", the open sea crashes on Playa de los Perros, that has everything, fewer dogs, but it owes its name to the hoarse barking of the sea lions. Red crabs congregate between the rocks, like cooked, enduring the eternal storm of the waves. And on the shore another iguana expels seawater through its nose to get rid of the salt. Next to the cliffs a blue-footed booby strolls in the afternoon, with a scared face and a comical walk. And they all rest on their portion of the island or their redoubt of the sea: sea lions, turtles, Sharks, crabs, iguanas and boobies. The island is so full of life and so full of peace that one finds it hard to conceive of such harmony in the animal kingdom., in the wild, not civilized.
Inland was also still, as stamped on the ground, a different iguana. it was huge, yellow and belongs to an almost extinct subspecies: the Santa Fe land iguana. World War II also reached the Galapagos and the presence of soldiers decreased the number of many endemic species.. 750 US Marines arrived on the islands to boarding. War mixed with the boredom of armed men often leads to dire ideas. They say that the military sharpened their aim against the sea lions, turtles and other animals puzzled by unprecedented violence on the islands. Some species of iguanas disappeared.
the animals learned to forget because the human being surrendered to the magic of nature.
But the Galapagos Islands survived man and war. And what is most surprising, the animals learned to forget because the human being surrendered to the magic of nature. The army left and calm returned, with the intention of staying forever. There is no place in the world where our species has demonstrated such an extraordinary act of humility as in the Galapagos Islands.. The man has turned away, has resigned himself to the piece of land that belongs to him, like one more, and live on tiptoe, with tourists who are lectured if they get too close to the species, if they interfere where they shouldn't.
No histrionic parties, or motorcycle thugs, girls or selling a summer night, or beach bars. On the island of Santa Cruz you can only hear the sound of the waves and the flapping of the pelicans.
Comments (2)
Laura B
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Es maravilloso, Dani.
The thing about the dive shops and the guanabana juice has touched my heart.
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julian l
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Visiting Galapagos is a destination that I want to visit. Its nature and animals that one can see are great. I sent you greetings from Colombia .
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