The Legacy of Charles Darwin

Meryl's bounty from the weekly vegetable market.

 While Meryl went in on the water taxi to visit the Saturday morning vegetable market, I attacked the broken bow running lights. Since my blue-footed boobie had pooped on just about everything on the bow pulpit, it took a while to get things clean enough to work on it. After removing the light I tested it, but only the green LED would come on, which was very strange. I took out the new running light and tested it and found only it’s green LED would light. I then rearranged the source wiring I was using to test and found both lights were functional, but very sensitive to voltage (LEDs usually have a wide voltage range they accept). Even thought I was half laying over the bow pulpit I managed to get the wires soldered back on (the wires were too thin to crimp) and finally got everything working again. A simple job that would take 20 minutes in my shop at home took all morning on the boat.

Everywhere you go in the Galapagos there are sea lions. The seem to populate more of the waterfront than the people do.

This would be a great place to land your dingy, except for . . .

The main street of beautiful downtown San Cristobal.

In the afternoon we decided to walk west out of town to the Charles Darwin Interpretive Center. Spain had donated a ton of money to San Cristobal to have the center built, but over the years there had been little to no maintenance and things were beginning to fall apart. We did learn a lot about the formation of the islands and their history.

The Charles Darwin Interpretive Center.

Display in the Center showing the influence of the three ocean currents on the Galapagos.

Geographically the Galapagos Islands are uniquely situated in the Pacific Ocean 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, with the warm Panama Current coming down from the northeast, and the Cromwell (Equatorial Counter Current) sweeping in from the west and meeting the cold waters of the Humboldt Current that comes northwards along the coast of South America. The warmer Cromwell current sweep under the cold Humboldt Current and bring the nutrient rich deeper waters to the surface in the area of the Galapagos, a perfect stew for propagation of wildlife and fauna. This provides a fertile feeding ground for the numerous species of seabirds, including the blue-footed boobie, the white-footed boobies, the frigate birds, flightless cormorants, pelicans and other species. Ashore are the famous finches on which Darwin based his monumental theory of evolution, including one who uses catus quills as a tool to get bugs out of holes. The waters around the Galapagos are rich in sea life, with green turtles, sea lions, penguins, eagle rays, white and black tipped sharks, hammerhead sharks, and the endemic Galapagos sharks.

The famous Galapagos finches that served to catalyze Darwin's theory of evolution.

Their are over 20 species found nowhere else in the world except the Galapagos, making it a wonderful research base for Charles Darwin who formulated his famous Origin of Species. Darwin surmised: “hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact — that mystery of mysteries — the first appearance of new beings on this earth.”

The Interpretive Center also sheds a little light on the colonization of the island. First used by buccaneers and whalers, the islands were populated by a rough crowd set on exploiting the resources of the island, mainly tortoises, seals, and whales. As more criminals were sent to the island from the mainline, the decadence of the islands increased. A large penal colony was established on Isabella (home to the famous “Wall of Tears”) but the guards were so repressive that the prisoners revolted, stole a yacht owned by an American and sailed off to Hawaii, never to be heard from again. A well known Baroness from Europe showed up with her three lovers. Two turned up dead and the Baroness disappeared, leaving only one lover who knew the true story. A group of Norwegians tried to set up a altruistic colony to harvest cod only to be set back by the hardships of the place. While rich in resources, the islands turned out to be a difficult place to live in its isolated location in the Pacific Ocean.

Our daily toil, hauling 10 gallons of water back to the boat.

Back at the water taxi dock we asked one of the water taxi drivers about sources of drinking water for the boat. He took us up to the public bathrooms and using a coke bottle, carefully metered out 10 gallons into our two plastic cubes.  Over the next week we would always bring the two cubes in with us and stop by the bathrooms at the end of the day to refill our water supply on the boat. We’re one of the few boats without a water maker on board so we don’t have much choice in the matter.