Dave & Meredith’s Travel Blog

I am no geologist, so this will obviously be a short post. But I thought a good place to start talking about the islands would be in their formation in the first place. BTW, my Aunt Wendy is sharing the blog with her students in Waterloo, NY (hi kids!), so I feel some responsibility to do some educational posts and also feel some pressure to get things right. My dad knows a lot more about this stuff than I ever will, so maybe he can make some informative comments.

The Galapagos Islands were formed by volcanic activity. If you want proof, look at this picture:

Spatter Cones on Bartolome Island

There is a “hot spot” below the seabed in the islands, which is essentially a place where magma escapes through the earth’s crust. As the tectonic plate that the seabed sits on moved above that fixed hot spot over a period of millions of years, the islands were formed. Because the tectonic plate is moving west to east, the oldest islands in the Galapagos are in the east (some of which have eroded to the point that they are completely covered by water again), and the youngest are in the west (Fernandina is the youngest, and is currently located right above the Galapagos hot spot, so its volcanoes are still active). Scientists believe the various islands are between 1 and 10 million years old. You can learn more about hot spots and plate tectonics by clicking here. Many islands and island chains around the world were formed this way, including Hawaii. The thing I find fascinating about this subject is that the theories of plate tectonics and hot spots were so recently formed. People didn’t know much about this stuff just 50 years ago.

Many of the hikes we did on the trip were on lava. One of the days (when we were on Fernandina Island), we walked on a massive lava flow - it was one of my favorite walks. Relatively soon after lava cools (very soon, in geologic terms), some plant species can grow in what seems like impenetrable black rock. Here are a couple pictures from that walk:

Scenes from our Lava Walk

Well, I don’t think I’ve said anything inaccurate about volcanic activity, so I’m going to quit while I’m ahead. Keep this topic in mind though, because it is one of the important factors in the discussion about evolution and why plants and animals are different in the Galapagos than they are in other places.

We’re back in mainland Ecuador after an amazing trip to the Galapagos. We have several posts about the Galapagos to follow this post, and lots of pictures - we hope to get them posted within the next few days.

I’ve updated the itinerary page to match the sites we visited during the trip. Here is a map of the route we took through the Galapagos Islands on our 11-day live-aboard journey (it starts and ends at Baltra Island, which is where the main airport is, and runs in a counter-clockwise direction):

Here is a different map of the islands with a little more detail:

We hardly know where to start to describe the trip. The Galapagos Islands are quite overwhelming (in a good way!) because of the insane amount of flora and fauna, in addition to the many geologic, scientific and conservation topics to discuss. I’m 100% sure that we won’t do justice to these topics, and we’re not going to provide an exhaustive lecture on everything we learned in the Islands. We will touch on some of the things we found fascinating, and in some cases, we’ll provide links to third-party information for those of you who want to learn more.

Some of you have been to the Galapagos Islands. For those who have not, it is a unique experience and I cannot recommend it enough! There are a few different ways to see the islands - we went on a small live-aboard motor yacht with 15 passengers, a tour leader, a naturalist guide, and the ship’s crew. There are also cruises on larger live-aboard ships which may provide more amenities (laundry service would have been nice - we were hiking and snorkeling at the equator after all!), but the larger ships may not be able to travel to all of the islands due to the carrying capacity of the ship. There are also hotels on Santa Cruz Island and many operators that run day-trips around the islands. We chose our operator because it was one of the few who runs trips for longer than one week. We weren’t disappointed, but we also agree that any way you get to see this incredible place is worthwhile. For us, the most important aspect was that we had an excellent guide (Martin Loyola) and tour leader (Richard Parsons).

I hope you enjoy the upcoming posts (remember to read from the bottom up, and definitely look at Dave’s incredible pictures), but keep in mind that the best way to experience this place is to go yourself!