Sea and sea-adjacent creatures! But let us begin with a random selection of Galapagos pics.
A drink consisting of coconut water in said coconut with rum in it. You would think it would be delightful. You would be wrong. It tastes like something a doctor would make you drink before a procedure so your liver will glow or something. No delicioso. Unpleasant and medicinal. Take a pass on it.
The sign in the airport bathroom. Short version: the toilet water is recycled so it’s a weird color but that’s totally normal.
Our phenomenal guide Luis with a ginormous cricket on him.
He wore the equivalent of a balaclava while we were traveling around because he is very concerned about sun damage. We looked like hostages being taken around by a terrorist. See for yourself: here’s a picture of us in front of one of those “Yorkshire pudding” islands I mentioned.
Okay, sea creatures. First, one of my favorite creatures, one I was very excited to see, the Sally Lightfoot crab. Another name for them is “abuete negro” which I originally thought meant “black grandma” (I do not know Spanish) but when I looked up the definition of “abuete” I got a website that asked me what it meant to abide in Christ so I gave up. Sally Lightfoot crabs are vibrantly colored and I took about 700 pictures of them. I am a bit obsessed. Here’s what the famous author John Steinbeck had to say about them (from Wikipedia):
Many people have spoken at length of the Sally Lightfoots. In fact, everyone who has seen them has been delighted with them. The very name they are called by reflects the delight of the name. These little crabs, with brilliant cloisonné carapaces, walk on their tiptoes, They have remarkable eyes and an extremely fast reaction time. In spite of the fact that they swarm on the rocks at the Cape [San Lucas], and to a less degree inside the Gulf [of California], they are exceedingly hard to catch. They seem to be able to run in any of four directions; but more than this, perhaps because of their rapid reaction time, they appear to read the mind of their hunter. They escape the long-handled net, anticipating from what direction it is coming. If you walk slowly, they move slowly ahead of you in droves. If you hurry, they hurry. When you plunge at them, they seem to disappear in a puff of blue smoke—at any rate, they disappear. It is impossible to creep up on them. They are very beautiful, with clear brilliant colors, red and blues and warm browns.
…Man reacts peculiarly but consistently in his relationship with Sally Lightfoot. His tendency eventually is to scream curses, to hurl himself at them, and to come up foaming with rage and bruised all over his chest. Thus, Tiny, leaping forward, slipped and fell and hurt his arm. He never forgot nor forgave his enemy. From then on he attacked Lightfoots by every foul means he could contrive and a training in Monterey street fighting has equipped him well for this kind of battle). He hurled rocks at them; he smashed at them with boards; and he even considered poisoning them. Eventually we did catch a few Sallys, but we think they were the halt and the blind, the simpletons of their species. With reasonably well-balanced and non-neurotic Lightfoots we stood no chance.
Look! Little brown youngins!
We got to witness the congress of two crabs. They approached either other and very slowly the female slid upside-down under the male where they hung out for a while. I have to say I may be pushing anthropomorphic qualities onto this but it totally looked like the female didn’t want to go through with it and the male was pressing down hard on her shoulders like, “Shhh, you’ll like it, get down there, don’t be a prude.” I was considering pulling the female out from under him and then chastising him (“No means no, Crab!”) but I decided not to meddle in the affairs of the Grapsus grapsus.
Sea birds! Specifically pelicans and boobies. I learned that they plow into the surface of the water at crazy speeds because they dive-bomb into it. They have a gasket around their eyeballs to prevent damage from this intense impact and when those gaskets eventually fail, the bird goes blind and dies of starvation. Because Mother Nature is a mean beeyotch in case you had forgotten (see above crab rape).
One of our first stops was a small blob of lava where a school of sardines had swum by so everybody was hanging out there. By everybody, I mean egrets, cranes, blue-footed boobies, pelicans, penguins and fur sea lions. It was amazing.
Another place all the sea creatures were hanging out was at the small fish market on the main island. This poor woman was trying to run a business and she has this big furry sea lion begging like a dog and a group of giant demonic-looking pelicans watching her every move. Other sea lions hung out nearby but took the opportunity to nap at the feet of other tourists.
Fur sea lions! They swam around us all over the place. They are actually light blonde but look dark brown when they are wet. You can tell how long they’ve been sitting on the beach sunbathing by how much of them is blonde. They are charming but judgmental. I was snorkeling at one point and a fur sea lion swum up to me, looked at me, made a gesture like, “Nah,” and swam away. I was like, “Hey, you don’t know me, I have many redeeming qualities if only you’d get to know me nevemind you’re gone.”
A penguin parent guarding his penguin baby. It might help to know the penguins are a foot tall. They are super-wee and precious.
Next entry: the end of my trip to the Galapagos.