The Galápagos Islands
The geologists tell us that the earth’s core is composed of metals heated by compression to unimaginable temperatures and that the concentric layers around that core are yet hot enough to fry anvils. Here on the outermost crust animals and vegetables drift around on massive tectonic plates penetrated here and there by hot spots in the underlying mantle, chimneys that squirt molten lava through whatever happens to be drifting past overhead.
The most famous of these hot spots has been constructing the islands of Hawaii over the eons and continues the project at this very moment at Kilauea Volcano on the southern tip of the Big Island and also several leagues to the southeast where the Hawaiian hot spot is piling up a seamount soon to emerge above the waves.
Another of these hot spots splatters up lava through the Nazca Plate as it slides beneath the eastern Pacific Ocean towards Ecuador and Peru and the resulting Andes. Just there Charles Darwin visited on HMS Beagle in 1835 and turned the Galápagos Islands into magnets for naturalists.
The combination of isolation and ongoing volcanism provides an unusual compression of geologic time. In the space of days your Galápagos cruiser takes you from the deep past to right now. On lifeless shattered fields of recently cooled magma, mollugo plants and lava cactus take root before your eyes and in millennia provide biomass where bushes grow and finches nest. Mangrove rafts float in from the coast of Peru freighted with iguanas and giant tortoises. Frigate birds poop out special delivery ironwood seeds from Guatemala. Ocean currents drop off sea lions and vermillion Sally Lightfoot crabs. Penguins paddle up from Antarctica and adapt to life in the tropics. An ice age lowers the sea level such that all these critters can lumber from island to island on land bridges. Then the glaciers melt and the sea rises and the Galápagos Islands become again islands, perfect laboratories for species differentiation.
Finally human beings appear to gawk and wonder and snap photos for their victims back home. Ansel Adams himself could not do justice to the Galápagos Islands.
Then
Now
hutch adventure 2 
Wonderful travels…thanks for sharing.
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Hi Bill, it was a great trip and it was good to find you as a new friend. Your description of the Galapagos is sure to arouse interest in anyone who reads your post. But unless they have the third deck of a big yacht to gather with a drink and enjoy friends, the water, and a great view of the islands they haven’t experienced the real deal. That was fun.
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Thanks for sharing
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Bill, you write good stuff. thanks. Where next?
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Thanks Bill, looks fabulous, enjoy! Judy Weiner
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WOW…what a gift you, Bill and Lori in her own Spirit way, continue to share…thank you so much! Kate Alves
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You have to watch the historic documentary The Galapagos about the first settlers. It is so compellingly interesting.
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Dear Bill,
A nice place to be. Thank you to share with us your travelling and your experience.
Where is the next stop ?
Andi went back to Switzerland, I am in Torçay and prepare his arrival with friends the 20.6.
Bises
Colette
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Thank you so much Bill. It is wonderful to see & share the world through your eyes and eloquent words.
The Galapagos Islands…what an amazing place — then & now!
Sending hugs,
love,
Susan & Peter
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Thank you for bringing us along on your fantastic journeys. Your words transport us to foreign worlds and allow us to gawk and linger in their beauty. Write on!!!
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… so happy that you’re having the time to see all of these ‘wonders of the world’… Thanks for sharing them with us
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Hi Bill ,
Great ‘arm-chair’ travel as you took us through the ‘wonderous’ land called Galapagos ! Love those ‘blue~footed boobies ! ‘
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