Back to Mainland Ecuador

Arriving back to the mainland after 6 weeks in San Cristóbal was most definitely a shock to the system. The rubbish and stray animals hits you straight up, and then, I wandered onto the beach in the morning in Puerto López while the fishermen were bringing in their catches of the day to sell, and there were piles of baby hammerheads getting their heads cut off and being prepped for sale. When I asked a local whether it is allowed, to fish them in those quantities, and that small, he simply said “más pequeño, más delicioso” - the smaller they are the better they taste. Honestly, humans are fucked - most dangerous animals on the planet, we are.

I nearly cried; to have come from blissful San Cristóbal, where wildlife is respected, fishing is done sustainably, and illegal fishing is taken seriously… so seriously that they have 31 Peruvian and Venezuelan fishermen in prison in San Cristóbal currently for illegal fishing in Galápagos waters. They were caught with close to a tonne of endangered marine life including sharks and rays. Because fishing in the Galápagos is regulated by the Parque Nacional it remains a refuge for wildlife and so as illegal fishermen continue to overfish and use illegal fishing techniques, like long lining, they are then drawn to Galápagos due to the abundance of wildlife present.

To then arrive in Puerto López, in this “fishing village”, where they are clearly over fishing and bringing in undersize catches just broke me. I was so much in shock that I couldn’t even pull my camera out to record the absolute horror of it all; I just stood there, jaw dropped, feeling devastated, and glad that in Australia there are proper regulations on this sort of thing. I did manage to snap some pics of the normal fish market activity as that was actually pretty cool to see.

So Puerto López - not much to it, really, during the garua season, and after 6 weeks in paradise there wasn’t much point trekking to the beaches in the rain. On arrival at night I headed out to grab a bite to eat and met a local along the way who spoke no English but, in my shitty Spanish I was coerced after some caña shots into some type of boat trip the next day which I was hoping was whales but I didn’t know the Spanish word for whales, so I just decided, stuff it, it’s only $20; if it’s not whales I can always try again the next day.

So I rock up to the tour agency the next morning and discover that it’s actually a spanish speaking tour only….. oh well this should be interesting. So we all barrel onto the boat. I’m dressed for anything incase it’s snorkelling but, turns out it was whales AND snorkelling. Within minutes, we’ve barely left the port and there are humpbacks breaching. Apparently it’s mating and birthing season so there were babies everywhere. I never thought I was one for whale watching - seemed like something old people did when they got silver hair, BUT, actually it was pretty cool to see them up close.

It’s hard to balance taking pics and actually seeing them with your eyes so I basically just held my camera out and snapped blindly so they’re not the best pics - bit blurry, as I was guessing with the focus LOL, but I love them all the same :) I did a hard pass on the snorkelling; the guides had to throw bait in the water to attract fish because, clearly they overfish here, and so there’s nothing really to see; besides, I’ve just been snorkelling with sea lions, sharks, rays, turtles etc for the past 6 weeks so what would actually be the point here? So I stayed on the boat and watched the whales breaching off in the distance.

So whale watching done - TICK - I can’t see the point in being in Puerto López after having been in an island paradise immediately prior, so I decide on a complete change of scenery, and bus 12 hours to Baños overnight to immerse myself in the mountains and volcanos of Ecuador. Driving into town this morning I see billboards advertising KFC, and it’s only then that I realise that Galápagos had no fast food - how refreshing. I guess that adds even more to the beauty of it all.

Because I’m clearly obsessed with Galápagos here’s some more pics I haven’t yet shared from my weekend in Santa Cruz prior to jetting back to the mainland. And also a quote I saw in the Darwin + Wolf shop - “The Earth has a very serious disease called global warming. This is directly caused by humans. Many animals in the ocean are endangered. Either change what we are doing, or change the planet. SAVE THE OCEANS”.

So before I turn into a full blown hippy and shout out save the trees, save the animals, save the oceans…. no seriously - I’m not going to become vegetarian, but there are sustainable ways we can correct our wrongs whilst recovering the damage we’ve done and hopefully recover the animal populations that are in danger. For example in the Galápagos there were some of the giant turtle species on Isla Española that were found about 60 years ago.. there were only 14 of them and now there are over 3000 because they found one really horny dude (Diego) in a zoo in San Diego and they brought him back to the Galápagos to breed with the females they found, and he has since fathered like 1000 kids. That particular species is now considered able to self sustain, so they will, in the years to come, relocate them all from the breeding centre back to Isla Española where they belong. RESULT!

So if we take care of the planet and do our part we can continue to see amazing places like the ones below - Las Grietas, Puerto Ayora and Tortuga Bay. 💕💕💕