nature

Sealife Safari

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Giens Peninsula, Hyères, Côte d’Azur. 19.30.

The original plan for today was to spend a leisurely five or six hours biking around the island of Porquerolles, a short ferry ride from Tour Fondue. It was already a quarter to eleven when I realised we weren’t going to make it: one of our group of five wasn’t feeling up to it, and we’d already lost at least an hour of the best part of the day.

In the end, it’s no great loss. The ferry to Porqerolles alone would have cost us 35€ each, which is quite a lot for an island that you could swim to if you really wanted. For context, it costs less to cross the English Channel by boat… but then, I’m not surprised. Tour Fondue is nakedly expensive in relation to the rest of the area. 4.80€ for a bottle of Coca Cola…! What planet are they living on?

Anxious not to let the day go to waste, I went on a cliff top hike with Rafe and Harry.

The Mediterranean has been pretty choppy since the day we arrived, so today’s clear waters and shimmering turquoise shoals were a sight worth waiting for. A few French families had found their way down to the various secret beaches for a morning swim. One of the local shags was fishing among the reefs of Baie du Niel, followed closely by three large mullets.

With the water so clear, it was very easy to follow the seabird as it powered through the water like a feathered harpoon. Every time it plunged below the surface, the mullets would accelerate to keep up, mirroring its pace and sharp turns. You don’t normally get to see their supreme aquatic acrobatics in England’s choppier seas, so I felt pretty lucky.

There were plenty of Sardinian warblers about, but they’ve been nigh-on impossible to capture on film, so I contented myself with one of the local robins singing his heart out by the cliffs.

Rafe suggested waiting out the midday sun before taking the kayak down to the beach. It took a little while to haul it out of the attic and pump it up, but we did stumble upon an Aladdin’s cave of supplies in the process: flippers, snorkels, life jackets and just about anything that might be useful for a seaside holiday.

Thank God I brought my GoPro. Today was a reminder that I made a huge blunder by not taking it with me to Chile (and, by proxy, the Galápagos), but at least it got some work!

The Mediterranean is quite spectacular from any angle, but it really does come to life in a whole new way beneath the waves. Sunlight filtering down onto a world of perfect blue and shimmering fish. For once, all the variables were in place: my mask fit like a glove, my breathing tube was the right height and my flippers worked like a dream. Snorkelling was heavenly! Maybe I just haven’t had the right gear before…

Wrasse, bream, combers, saupes and gobies darting across the rocks. Clouds of damselfish drifting in the sunlight. In some ways, it feels like being back in the Galapagos – a little less spectacular, perhaps, but every bit as enjoyable.

A whistle got my attention as I drifted across the bay. A Frenchwoman swimming over by the rocks asked me if I wanted to see un poulpe. I came paddling over. I confess I didn’t see it at first, despite her pointing to where it must have been. They are masters of disguise and can compress their bodies into even the tightest of crevices, so I swam off after a few minutes’ search turned up no sign.

I returned the way I had come and thought I’d give the rock another try. Sure enough… there it was.

I’ve seen a tiny octopus before on a rockpooling adventure many, many years ago, but I’ve never had any luck tracking one down since. They’re fascinating creatures to observe, with their slowly pulsating heads, the siphons on either side acting like exhaust pumps and their eight legs moving as though each had a mind of its own. They’ve been patrolling the rocky coasts of this planet for over 150 million years, so it’s quite a privilege to see such an ancient creature in the wild, and so close, too.

It feels good to have finally spent some time in the sea, especially when this place literally looks out across the Mediterranean. I also managed to track down my photos of the full moon from the other night, which really was a sight to remember.

Our last full day in France tomorrow. I believe crêpes are in order, but if the weather’s kind to us, I’ll try to get out early and see the flamingoes one more time before the others are up. Late risers as they are, that shouldn’t be too hard to achieve! BB x

Dry Country

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Hartley Wintney, England. 22.20.

I left the UK for Chile at the end of the first week of July, just as the heat wave was ramping up and the first fires were breaking out. When my plane touched down at Gatwick yesterday, it was through the first rain clouds the country had seen since June. Like the first snows of Patagonia, I arrived just in time to catch the changing of the seasons.

What a change it’s been here, though. I’ve never seen England so dry. Dying trees. Trickling streams. Empty ponds. Parks and gardens a shade of yellow that would be more at home in a Van Gogh painting. Chile gets ravaged by the heat in summer as well, but at least they are ready for it when it comes. We even closed the schools back in June, it got so bad – and that takes some doing. We don’t even close for snow these days.

I dread to think of the impact this terrible drought will have had on the wildlife of these British islands – though I know it’s a pretty established truth that life always finds a way.

Like this little vole, snacking on some birdseed. I never did find its larger Chilean cousins, the vizcacha and the chinchilla, though I’m fairly certain I did see one of the rare rice rats during my trip to the Galápagos last week. I’ll have to try again someday – if I can ever take my eyes off those endless South American skies.

No condors here, sadly, but the local population of buzzards and red kites are a perfectly adequate substitute. I only saw the kites a couple of times today, but the buzzard was around a fair bit. Maybe he was looking for the vole? I can’t imagine it would be anything more than a snack for something as big as a buzzard, although at this time of year the hunter may have chicks to feed somewhere in the forest.

Tomorrow – Athens! The last mad adventure of the summer. My wedding suit is packed and I’m traveling ever so light, since I’ve decided to leave the camera behind this time and go all in on the personal side of the city. After all, I’m going out there to see an old friend tie the knot, not as a tourist. From what I’ve heard of Greek weddings, I’d be mightily surprised if I have the energy to do anything the day after, let alone during the early hours of the morning.

See you on the other side! BB x

Jötunheim

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Puerto Ayora, Galápagos Islands. 18.55.

Coming all the way to the Galápagos Islands and leaving without seeing the giant tortoises would be like going to Jordan and skipping out on Petra, or bypassing any kind of safari whatsoever on a visit to Kenya or Tanzania. You could do it, but you’d be missing out on something truly special.

As luck would have it, you don’t have to go too far to find them. Though they may not be as numerous as they once were long ago (an astonishing 350,000 were carried off the islands by sailors and scientists as a source of food and oil), there are still thousands of them to be found even on the populated islands of San Cristóbal and Santa Cruz. The ranches in the interior will give you your best chance at seeing them, but don’t get it confused: they’re not open-air zoos built to accommodate the surviving giant tortoises. They’re functioning orchards and pastoral plots that happen to sit right on the tortoises’ migration route to and from the clouded highlands. The fact that they provide a ready supply of fruit is simply one of the reasons they can often be found lurching around the ranches.

I was picked up from my hostal at about 8.42 by a slightly irascible taxi driver. On the way out of town, I couldn’t help noticing a dollar store selling all sorts of cheap plastic tat: brainrot bracelets, a K-Pop Demon Hunters make-up kit, imitation night goggles from Lilo and Stitch and a plastic figurine of Haaland. For an island that makes such a big deal about not importing single-use plastics, there’s a lot of single-use plastic junk on sale here for locals and tourists alike. I hope one day we learn to stop mass-producing stuff like this and give capitalism one almighty sock in the jaw, though I doubt that will happen in my lifetime.

My destination today was Galápagos Frontier, the closest accessible ranch to Puerto Ayora. I was going to walk there, but when the heavens opened shortly after seven o’clock, I decided to take up the ranch owner’s offer of a taxi shuttle and save myself the hour and a half’s hike. By the looks of things, it would have been a pretty straightforward route, as a separate cycle lane follows the highway right into the interior, but it did allow me to slow down and enjoy my breakfast, so I guess I was grateful.

The taxi driver dawdled a bit, so he made up for lost time by hurtling along the highway, narrowly missing a couple of chickens and a very fleeting glimpse of a pachay – the Galápagos crake, a rare and endemic cousin of the moorhen that came to these islands over a million years ago. It was some relief when he finally slowed down near the ranch gates, because I don’t like to think what would have happened if we’d met a giant tortoise around the bend.

Speaking of which, I counted at least three of the lumbering giants before we’d even arrived. At four feet tall by five feet across, they’re pretty hard to miss.

Our guide, Julio César (ave!), had a lot to tell us about the ranch and its flora and fauna, so he brought along a Canadian volunteer to translate for him, as the American mother and son on our trip didn’t speak any Spanish. We butted heads a bit over travel advice for Peru as the young American fella was headed there next. She recommended Paracas and Huacachina as her highlight. I told him I’d managed Paracas in a day and she said I was “fucking insane”, which seemed an odd sort of way to talk to a client, but… that’s North Americans for you. No filter. I gave them a wide berth for the rest of the tour and stuck close to Julio, bypassing the need to speak in English for the rest of the morning.

It’s only a small boundary of mine, but I don’t take kindly to being sworn at without uttermost provocation. Priggish, perhaps, but it’s a principle I try to stick to.

Anyway. I wasn’t here to hang out with tourists. I came up here to see the giant tortoises. And see them I did.

I’ve always known they’re incredibly long-lived creatures, but just how long has never really dawned on me. Some of these tortoises were well over a hundred years old, with at least one or two individuals over the one-hundred-and-fifty mark. Julio showed us the sun-bleached shell of a male he had found dead on the ranch at the start of the tour, adding that it was the only such cadaver he’d found in forty years working this corner of the island. That statistic alone hints at the ridiculous surviving power of these creatures, whose metabolism is so slow that they can go for as long as a year without food or drink.

Turtles may have been around since the Triassic in one form or another, but these giants really are reminiscent of the age of the dinosaurs in their almost miraculous longevity.

You can age a giant tortoise by their shells. Younger tortoises have more clearly defined grooves in their shells, which wear away with age. Ironically, the fewer the lines, the older they are. So it stands to reason that some of these tortoises individuals we saw – like the one below – were incredibly old. Old enough to have seen two world wars come and go. Old enough to remember a time before tourism on the islands. And with the record age in captivity pushing 174 years, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that one or more tortoises on the islands remember a young Charles Darwin who came here in 1835.

I don’t know about you, but I found that absolutely mind-boggling.

Many of the tours on the ranches include a visit to the lava tunnels, a labyrinthine network of caves hollowed out of the mountain by ancient rivers of molten rock, long since cooled and emptied. Near the coast, these are the preferred burrows of the Galápagos penguin, but up here in the highlands, they’re more commonly used as roosts for barn owls and the three endemic bat species that call the islands home.

The most amazing thing about the lava tunnels – apart from the fact that they seem to go on forever – is the way their ceilings sparkle and gleam in the torchlight. Thousands of water droplets and bacteria scintillate in silver and gold, making the long dark of the tunnels alive with light.

Back up and out in the light, we were tailed for a short distance by a flock of anis. These cuckoo/crow-like birds aren’t native to the Galapagos but were brought here from the mainland in the 70s to deal with the horsefly problem blighting the highland ranches. Now they’re everywhere, attacking much of the native wildlife, so every few years the local community organises a major cull of the species to keep their numbers in line.

It doesn’t help that they’re actually a very endearing kind of bird. This sort of job is much easier when the culprit is small, faceless and preferably creepy-crawly.

Living and working in Santiago this summer has, at times, felt decidedly European. You’re never under any allusion that you’re in an entirely different hemisphere, but all the same, the roads and the streets are very western, very cosmopolitan. Up in the highlands of the Galápagos, there’s something very… equatorial about the place. One-storey houses at the roadside with chalkboards selling fruit. Red earth roads leading into the distance with thick green vegetation on either side. Tarmac roads without pavements or bollards. It almost feels like being back in Uganda.

With the vegetation so high at this time of year (following the daily rains), it can be hard to encounter a giant tortoise that isn’t buried up to its neck in greenery. So I was glad to find at least one by the roadside that was wandering out in the open. It can be hard to gauge their size when they’re on their own, but if I told you that their shells can reach a man’s waist or even abdomen in the very largest specimens, that may give you an idea.

It’s been quite a wild ride, this summer, and spending the last few days with the giant tortoises of the Galápagos seems like a nice way to wind down what has been a total blur of events since I left the UK to burn under the unforgiving summer sun of July 2026. It’s still burning now. In South America we’ve had rain almost every day here since I arrived. If only I could send some of it back to Europe ahead of my return. Folk might welcome it there.

A week from today, I will be in Athens, on what really will be the last of my labours for the summer. I had originally planned to make my own way home across Europe after that, but then the Galapagos happened, so I’m going to save both money and time and come back to the UK when the wedding festivities are over to edit my photos and rest. Lord knows I could do with the comfort of my own bed and books again.

But before that, I have one final Galápagos adventure upon which I must embark: the frigatebird colony of North Seymour Island. I hope the weather is kind on this last expedition. BB x