flamingo

Luck of the Draw

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Puerto Ayora, Galápagos Islands. 19.52.

My final Galápagos expedition answered a question that’s been bugging me since I landed in Puerto Ayora two days ago: why is it perpetually cloudy here? San Cristobal had its fair share of cloudy days, but – with the exception of a few hours on Wednesday afternoon – Puerto Ayora has been shrouded in a mantle of grey and white from the moment I arrived. Well, I have my answer: rain shadow.

It’s not that the entire island of Santa Cruz gets more cloud than its eastern neighbour. It’s simply that all the cloud cover gets trapped behind the highlands, forcing it to build up over the south side of the island, like Tenerife in reverse. I was worried when we left Puerto Ayora that today would be a washout, but as soon as we cleared the Gemelas sinkholes, we stepped into a shining world of clear skies and tropical sun.

It’s a good thing I brought my sun lotion today.

One thing I’ve learned in my time in the Galápagos is that all of the tours are something of a lottery. You can pay whatever you like, but ultimately it’s the park rangers who dictate who has access and when. Sometimes you get lucky and get the best light of the day (before 11am) – and sometimes you don’t. Today was the latter. Beach first, hike last. It’s definitely the inferior of the two options, for at least three good reasons:

  • Animals are a lot more active in the earlier hours of the day. As the midday heat approaches, both birds and reptiles become a lot more reclusive to get out of the heat
  • Taking a dip in the Pacific feels a lot nicer (and a lot more earned) after stomping around for an hour or two under the sun
  • The midday lighting with the sun dead overhead isn’t exactly the optimal condition for photography, especially for dark subjects like frigatebirds

In short, I was a bit miffed when we were allocated a visit to Las Bachas first – not least of all because North Seymour is one of the more expensive day trips on offer (at around $260-300 at the cheaper end). In most other parts of the world, when you’re paying that much for a day trip, you usually get some kind of say as to how to work the itinerary.

The Galápagos are different – and I suspect that the tourism explosion of the last ten years or so has had a lot to do with that. The upside is that the system has the animals’ welfare at its heart – or so I’d like to believe anyway. Controlling the daily tourist visits allows the park rangers to set limits on disturbance to the native fauna, which can only be a good thing.

Rant over. Let’s get back to some good old-fashioned awe, wonder and nature writing.

First off, whether you’re visiting in the morning of the afternoon, Playa Las Bachas is a genuine haven. After days of choppy seas, finding a calm white sand beach like El Manglecito was a major treat. Once occupied by US troops to control access to the Panama Canal during WWII, the only patrols you’ll find there now are the ghost crabs that race up and down the beach, forming enormous collections of tiny spitballs as they sift through the sand for microscopic food washed up by the tide.

I’ve only seen Sally Lightfoots since I got here (and one crab that liked a lot more like the ones we have back home), so seeing so many of these beautiful ghost crabs was a major highlight.

One species I was nearly prepared to cough up another $150 to seek out was hanging around a small lagoon behind the sand dunes. The American flamingo is the fourth and final flamingo species in the Americas, meaning the only flamingo in the world that I have yet to see is the lesser flamingo of sub-Saharan Africa and west India. I thought you’d have to go all the way to neighbouring Isabela, the largest of the Galápagos Islands, to be in with a chance of finding one of these colourful creatures, but there’s a small colony here at Las Bachas that regularly puts in an appearance.

Bypassing Isabella means I leave without seeing two iconic Galápagos species: the penguin and the flightless cormorant. However, to even have a chance at seeing the latter, you need to skip the day trips and take a cruise that explores the westernmost islands, where the elusive flightless cormorant can be found – and that can cost upwards of $4,000 before factoring in the enormous financial handicap that applies to all single travellers.

On that note, seriously, what gives? Since touchdown last Saturday I’ve met just two other solo travelers here. The rest are couples, families or groups of retirees. If you get to talking with them, a great many of them are lawyers, bankers, hedge fund managers and businessmen. I feel very out of place as a teacher here. Whatever it might once have been, the Galápagos does seem to have become a rich man’s playground.

Thank goodness the only riches in this world that matter are the ones that were living and breathing on these islands long before people came here.

I saw another two turtles at Las Bachas before we got back on the zodiac and returned to our boat, the Galapagos Shark. The crossing to North Seymour is substantially shorter than, say, the journey to Punta Pitt, but you have to go it slow in these waters, as there are so many turtles about. While the other passengers stretched out on the forecastle, I stayed up on deck watching the shearwaters and storm-petrels dancing across the surface of the water behind us.

North Seymour Island is a strange place. Under the right conditions, I would go so far as to say that it might even be eerie. A forest of dead-looking trees. Golden grass on a slab of sun-scorched rock, where the boulders come to life before your eyes and take the shape of gigantic land iguanas, lumbering across the path like miniature dinosaurs, while pterodactyl-esque frigatebirds cast enormous shadows as they hang in the wind. It’s worth coming to this place if only because it’s so different to everywhere else.

The big draw of North Seymour is its huge colony of frigatebirds. These aerial pirates can be found all over the Galápagos Islands, but they have their primary stronghold here off the coast of Baltra. More than a thousand pairs breed here each year, accompanied by thousands more juveniles, making North Seymour probably the best place in the world to see these magnificent creatures up close.

Both great and magnificent frigatebirds can be found here. The difference between the two is only slight, but easily appreciated in the sunlight: male great frigatebirds have a green sheen on their shoulders, whereas magnificent frigatebirds’ shoulder feathers shine a glossy purple.

This is also a spectacular place to see the males inflating their famous throat sacs to attract the attention of passing females. We’re quite late into the breeding season, so this wasn’t as common a sight today as it was a month ago, but I did hear and see a few males displaying a fair distance from the path.

Frigatebirds are far and away my favourite birds of the Galápagos. They may be one of the easier creatures to spot – they were the first animals I saw as the plane came in to land and I am quite sure they will be the last I see, too – but that does not detract in the slightest from their magnificence.

I caught myself thinking more than once that if I ever got a tattoo (Ed.: I won’t), I would consider the silhouette of one of these beautiful creatures. I seem to be drawn to the vultures of the animal kingdom, even where there are no vultures. Or perhaps it’s the fact that these aerial pirates are effectively feathered bandits – and I have always had a thing for bandits. I very nearly wrote my undergraduate dissertation on bandits.

One of the best things about the Galapagos is that the animals’ lack of fear allows you to witness the kind of behaviour that normally goes unnoticed. This youngster called its mother to it and, after much high-pitched pleading, convinced her to disgorge her catch so that it could eat.

Frigatebirds aside, I finally managed to track down a Galápagos endemic: the Galapagos Dove. These tiny cousins of the Peruvian doves must have been blown onto these islands millions of years ago, adapting into the colourful, rock-patterned creatures you can see today. They avoid towns and cities, so to have a chance of finding them you have to search the more remote corners of the inhabited islands.

So far I’ve managed to neglect the other star of North Seymour: the land iguanas that have made this island their home since they were extirpated from Baltra. Only the males have the distinctive sandy-orange colouration – the females are a more uniform grey in colour.

Before we left, a scuffle in the rocks sent one of the females scurrying across the path and into the shadows of the cliff. Her spook, the alpha male, followed her only as far as the path before stopping to cast a languid and uncaring eye in our direction.

These land iguanas look a lot more like their green cousins back on the mainland than their hyperspecialised marine cousins with whom they share the island. A younger me would have come to the islands purely for the iguanas. I was hugely into reptiles back then. I eventually became more interested in birds, partly because the UK doesn’t exactly have a thriving population of reptiles. So it was nice to embrace my inner child today and binge on some spectacular reptiles.

I spent my last afternoon in Santa Cruz down by the mangrove-lined fisherman’s wharf watching the pelicans. There is always bycatch to be had and so both pelican and frigatebird gather at the right time of day to pick up the scraps left out for them by the fishermen.

Like so many gringos, I’m just a visitor to these islands: here to see one of nature’s greatest marvels before returning to my normal life far across the sea. But these galapagueños spend their entire lives surrounded by these beautiful creatures: pelicans, turtles, frigatebirds, mockingbirds, sea lions, marine iguanas, giant tortoises and Sally Lightfoot crabs are as much a part of their everyday as house sparrows and pigeons are for us. That’s absolutely mind-boggling for me, but it’s only a different reality. No wonder the rangers are so defensive of their greatest treasure.

Tomorrow, I have to make my way back up to Baltra to catch my flight back to Guayaquil, then on to Santiago via a layover in Lima. It’s a fairly long-winded flight, but the real question is how to get to the airport as a single traveler. I might end up taking a taxi to the Itabaca channel, as it’s set at $25 and I did just find a secret stash of dollars that I forgot I had (I’m very good at hiding my cash in different places for safety’s sake and then forgetting where I put it).

My adventures are nearly over. It’s been a long summer. It’s going to sound odd, but I could use a holiday. Traveling solo means being switched on all the time, even when you’re laid out on a tropical beach. The Galápagos is neutral territory, but there is no place like home. I’m looking forward to a little peace of mind – but that is still some ten days away. The journey continues! BB x

South Sea Safari

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Hostal Coastal B&B, Puerto Natales. 18.42.

I had to improvise a bit today, after my original plan of jumping on a full-day tour of the Torres del Paine National Park and the Cueva del Milodón fell through. Fortunately, you don’t even have to leave Puerto Natales to enjoy some spectacular wildlife, even in the heart of winter. I was also lucky with the weather today, which was largely sunny for most of the day, making photography that much easier.

Many of Natales’ resident birds look deceptively like domesticated waterfowl, which could not be further from the truth. There are crested ducks absolutely everywhere, greatly outnumbering the smaller and daintier yellow-billed teals that are one of the few birds that remain wary of humans around here. The black-necked swans that live out in the fjord are probably the most iconic residents of Puerto Natales, but they were joined today by a few pairs of Coscoroba swans, a swan-like goose that can be found from the Antarctic waters of southern Chile all the way up to Brazil.

It’s clear who holds the reins of power, though. Not five minutes after the coscorobas came in to land, a pair of black-necked swans moved in, and one of them charged the coscorobas, putting them to flight. About the only bird I haven’t seen them attack yet are the tiny white-eared grebes – I wonder if that’s because they can’t see them?

Some of the birds here look familiar, even at a head-spinning distance of just over thirteen thousand kilometres from home. A small colony of house sparrows and feral pigeons have made the town their own, as they have in most towns and cities around the planet, and at first glance the oystercatchers look similar – but these are Magellanic oystercatchers, limited to the southern tip of South America. You can tell them apart by the yellow ring around their eyes. If other human species had survived, would we have been able to tell each other apart by similar signs?

There was one creature in particular that I was hoping to see – and I was not disappointed. After a half hour’s careful observation – having been almost certain I’d seen the silhouette I was looking for across the bay when I set out – I was very nearly scalped by an absolute giant that came soaring in from behind my post on the dock: a southern giant petrel, a genuine monster of the South Sea with a two-metre wingspan and a violent disposition.

The giant petrel will eat just about anything and has a reputation for bludgeoning and drowning birds much larger than itself, including penguins, gannets and albatrosses. It will even squabble with its kin over human waste left behind by passing ships. For this reason, it’s known as the vulture of the Southern ocean – which is probably why I was so keen to see one. Besides the simple fact that they really are incredibly impressive birds to behold.

A more friendly resident of Puerto Natales is the chimango caracara. You couldn’t miss these happy little hawks if you had even the least know-how about birds – they’re all over the place, perched on lampposts, drifting over the streets in the centre of town, wandering the dockyards in gangs of five or six and hopping along the beach in search of scraps. One of them had found the remains of a coscoroba and wasn’t about to share it with any one, flapping at any other caracaras that came its way.

The occasional passing clouds across the sun made for a tricky job adjusting the shutter speed on the new camera, but when the sun did come out, I could not have been happier with the results. It helps, of course, that so many of Patagonia’s animals aren’t that shy at all.

The old jetty is one of Puerto Natales’ most famous sights, and it hosts a large colony of Imperial cormorants in the winter months. Many of them had gone by mid-morning, seeking richer waters further down the fjord, but I must have counted nearly a hundred here the other night.

I went out for another walk after lunch, following the same circuit in the hope that the giant petrel would return. After about twenty minutes, it caught me by surprise once again, rushing so low over my head that I could hear the wind whistle in its giant wings. I hoped it might return the way it had come, but when it did not show itself again after about half an hour, I wandered back across town. I would have gone back to the hostal for a bit, but something made me press on to the other side, further south. That was where the petrel went, after all.

I didn’t quite make it as far as the fishing wharf, because there was a lovely view from the Edificio Cultural Costanera. I had only just packed away my camera when I found myself having to rush to get it back out again as a flamingo came in to land, right next to one just off the shore that I had not even noticed.

At such a close range, I could see just how heavily feathered the Chilean flamingo’s face is. It must be an adaptation to the cold, as these particular flamingos make their home here in Antarctic Chile and up in the frigid lakes of the Patagonian mountains. A far cry from the languid heat of Fuente de Piedra and Lake Turkana, for sure.

They were just the first. Soon, as the sun was beginning to set, a whole herd of flamingos came in to join them, their feathers glowing a blood-red scarlet in the evening light as they came down into the bay.

They made for quite a sight: a great herd of flamingos set against the backdrop of the snowy peaks of the Kawésqar Mountains. I certainly didn’t expect to see them again, having spotted earlier in the day that they had decamped to the other side of the bay since the day I arrived, and until recently, they had shown no signs of moving.

They were pretty quick to move, however, for one thing: a dark, powerful thing on two-metre wings, speeding towards them just above the surface of the water like a fighter plane. The petrel was back – and the mere sight of it put the fear of God into the flamingos. With much honking and splashing, they took off in a mad hurry, even when it was clear that the petrel was simply passing by.

What a spectacle they made as they flew up the fjord! It was like something out of a dream – and they kept turning this way and that, giving me every chance to snap them against the mighty mountains beyond.

It felt like the perfect ending to the trip, even though I have most of the day tomorrow as well, since my flight doesn’t leave until half four. But I come away with so many incredible memories, some of which I have written about and many of which I can print and put up on my wall. That’s how a good holiday should be, right? BB x

Mirrors in the Mountains

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Aeropuerto Internacional Alfredo Rodríguez, Arequipa. 16.20.

I have often seen it written of Uganda that it is Africa in miniature – that is, a concentrated version of the vast array of biomes you can find across the continent. The more I travel Peru, the more I’m convinced that this is South America’s equivalent: jungle, desert, glaciers, prairie, megacities and coastal plains. Peru really does have it all. No wonder it is home to the second largest number of bird species in the world (after Colombia).

If the Islas Ballestas are touted as the “poor man’s Galápagos”, then today I paid a flying visit to the poor man’s Salar de Uyuni. While my original plan for this adventure ended with a trip to Bolivia’s enormous salt flats on the edge of the Atacama Desert, my decision to go all in on an Amazonian side-quest to Manu got in the way. I really didn’t want to leave South America without seeing the salt lakes, though, as they were a fairly major inspiration for coming out here in the first place.

Luckily, there’s one tiny outlier of the Uyuni salt flats tucked away in the mountains east of Arequipa, within the Reserva Nacional de Salinas y Aguada Blanca. Getting there is a pretty arduous journey, but if you can find a way, the views are out of this world.

My onward flight to Cusco leaves at 18.05, so I needed to find a way to the salt flats and back in time to catch my plane. As luck would have it, there was a tour on GetYourGuide that fit the bill perfectly. It meant another early start, but after yesterday’s 2am kick-off, a 5.40am pick-up felt like a lie-in.

Not a bus or a people carrier this time, but a Land Cruiser. There were only two other travelers on board – a bilingual couple from Texas and Veracruz – so I got the front seat. Result!

Ah, but I’m not that naive. If something feels too good to be true, it’s usually because it is.

We had one more passenger to pick up before leaving Arequipa, but in a turn of events that would probably be familiar to a US Homeland Security officer, that one passenger turned out to be a family of five – they’d simply “forgotten” to mention they’d booked for more than one.

Not for the first time, being young and single became a major liability. As the most expendable passenger, I was asked if I would be so kind as to sit in the back.

I didn’t mind overmuch at the time – after all, one thing my superzoom isn’t very good at is in-transit photography – but I hadn’t considered the terrain… or the supreme manspreading abilities of the couple squeezed in next to me. The tarmac road stops shortly after leaving the Arequipa suburb of Paucarpata. From there on out, it’s a dirt track all the way up to the salt lakes – and the road winds a lot.

For all of two hours, I was rocked about in the back of the car, bumping my head quite a bit – which is more than can be said for the state of my legs! The relief when the lakes came into view… words can’t begin to describe!

There was a fair bit of activity around the edge of the lake – mostly free-roaming llamas and alpacas, but a couple of small herds of vicuña, too.

We stopped by the lake’s edge for a closer look. The herd’s dominant male wasn’t particularly chuffed, but he had his hands (or hooves?) full keeping one of the younger males in line with much running around and snorting.

Before going out to explore the area, our driver took us to the tiny lakeside community of Chilitia for a light breakfast. As an apology for the cramped conditions of the journey, breakfast was on the house for the three of us on the back row. Granted, we’re talking a grand total of 15 soles, but the gesture was very much appreciated – my legs were still pretty sore!

As always, the stop was also an incentive to buy local alpaca products. It’s getting to the stage where I’m considering breaking a lifelong aversion to souvenir shopping, but I’m still very conscious that I have to carry everything I have on my back – and it’s already a tighter squeeze than the back seat of that Land Cruiser once my lens is packed away.

So I just contented myself with watching the llamas and enjoying the palliative effects of a coca tea.

The most amazing thing about today’s adventure was the unrestricted freedom of it. Once we’d reached the water’s edge, we were given an hour and fifteen to go wherever we wanted – even out onto the flats, if we so desired.

Music to my ears! I’d already clocked a number of things I didn’t recognise, so I was anxious to get to work.

One of the big draws of the Salinas – at least for a naturalist like me – is that all three of South America’s flamingoes can be found here. The red-kneed Chilean flamingoes stayed far out in the centre of the lake, but a few flamboyances (yes, that is the collective noun) of Andean and James’ flamingoes were a little closer to the shore, so I tried to see if I could differentiate them by sight.

It’s mainly a question of checking their legs. Chilean flamingoes have black legs with distinct red knees. Andean flamingoes have yellow legs, and James’ flamingoes have red legs. If your eyesight is sharp enough, you’ll also notice that James’ flamingoes have red lores – that is, the patch of skin between the eye and the beak. Simplicity itself!

In the winter months, these lakes dry out and turn bone white under the unforgiving Andean sun, but now it’s the shoulder season, and there’s still enough water to keep the flamingoes around. Once it’s gone, they’ll leave these mountains and make for more permanent wetlands along the coast, like the Pántanos de Villa in Lima.

I’m still a kid at heart, so I scoured the lakeside for flamingo feathers. I found three bright pink ones, but they were kind of wet (as you might expect) so I cleaned them up using a couple of napkins I’d brought along and pocketed them. When they’re properly dry, I’ll put them in my journal with the others I’ve picked up along the way.

While there’s water, the salt lakes form an altogether different kind of miracle: an enormous natural mirror, broken only by the tiny ripples around the feet of the flamingoes. It’s places like this that make you especially grateful for clouds, because under a clear sky, half the magic of these magic mirrors would be lost.

Flamingoes aren’t the only knock-kneed stars of the altiplano. A familiar and yet unfamiliar call alerted me to a couple of Andean avocets, who sounded like the ones we have back home, only… accented. As though they’re speaking a different language. Which, I suppose, they are!

This one spent a long time chasing sandpipers. I’m not sure what threat it thought the tiny little waders posed, but it wasted no time in putting all the sandpipers in the immediate area to flight.

I spent about half an hour exploring the lakeside before turning inland in search of highland species. I found quite a handful, all of which I had to look up later: cream-winged ciclodes, Andean negritos, Cordilleran canasteros and crested ducks, to name just a few.

But the star find was a pair of adorable seedsnipes – a tiny wader distantly related to the plovers, but looking for all the world like a finch-sized partridge.

If it hadn’t been for the driver whistling me back to the car (fifteen minutes early, mind!), I’d have stuck around to see if I could find some more of them.

But alas! My traveling companions were bored and had seen all they had to see, taken the selfies they wanted to take, and were ready to go home. So I was summoned back to the car and we set off on the return journey to Arequipa.

Mercifully, I fell asleep for the first hour of the journey – probably on account of the sun! – but the last hour was even more cramped than the journey up had been, with both of my neighbouring passengers spread out in slumber. Once we were back in Arequipa, it took the best part of an hour before my legs had recovered completely.

That’s enough cramped conditions for one day. I’ve found my seat on the flight for Cusco and it’s wonderfully comfy (LatAm, you are a dream come true).

It’s time to go up again. The Inca stronghold of Cusco awaits! See you on the other side. BB x