The Galapagos Tortoise

  Recently I was at Brookfield Zoo in Brookfield, IL.  The last time I had visited Brookfield Zoo was this past spring and I remembered that the zoo had taken in some young Galapagos tortoises.  At the time, I was very excited to see the little guys because we had just gotten back from our Galapagos trip in mid-January.  During our visit a few days ago, the Galapagos tortoises were in the second animal house that we visited.  They had grown some in the last 6 months and were very active.  They were definitely more active then the other types of tortoises that were in displays nearby.  Here are a few photos I snapped of the Galapagos tortoises from Brookfield Zoo.

Here are a few of my favorite young tortoise shots from our January trip to the Galapagos. 

A couple giant tortoise facts:

1.  There were 11 types of giant Galapagos tortoises but with the death of Lonesome George, there are now 10.
2.   They are the world's largest tortoises.
3.   They have common ancestors from the mainland South America and are believed to have traveled to the Galapagos by water.

November 14th Article about the Galapagos

  I just stumbled across an article on MSN and wanted to share.  Click here to read "Rat kill in Galapagos Islands targets 180 million".  It discusses the non-native rat problem in the Galapagos and how it is being dealt with to save the native animals of the islands.  I remember hearing about the rat problems when we were visiting last January, however I did not see one rat while we were there.  I got lucky.  When we were on Isabela Island, we visited their tortoise reserve and there were very young tortoises that were in locked up enclosures.  Our guide said that the baby tortoises had to be protected from rats that would eat them.  If the plan does work for these rats to be exterminated, then I hope it really helps the native species of the Galapagos to keep reproducing and creating more and more generations for all of our human generations to see.

 

How Affordable is the Galapagos Islands?

  In January of this year, my husband and I visited Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.  Most people that visit the Galapagos Islands take a boat cruise but we decided to do the land route.  We based ourselves out of Santa Cruz Island and visited a couple of other islands by speedboat.  We also spent 3 nights in Guayaquil, Ecuador and 1 night in Panama City.  Our night in Panama City is a choice we made while booking our flight.  With Copa Airlines, we had a stopover in Panama City and we had the choice of deciding how long we wanted our stopover to be.  We ended up deciding to do an overnight stopover since it was our first time in Panama City and we wanted to do a little sight-seeing.
  In future posts I will delve more into our Ecuador trip but in this post I wanted to focus on financial information.  I also want to share how we came up with our trip and how we were able to financially make it happen.  For the longest time it had been my dream to visit the Galapagos Islands but I really never thought it would become a reality.  For some reason I had it in my head that the Galapagos were extremely expensive to visit.  I believed that airfare would be thousands of dollars and that the only way to see the Islands was by boat which would also be thousands of dollars.  The latter is true...it is expensive to see the Islands by boat. 
  Now originally my husband and I had our sights set on visiting Buenos Aires in January 2012.  I saw that flights out of Chicago wavered around $1,500-2,000 for January.  Spending $3,000 alone on transportation was not in our budget so I began researching other options in South America.  Brazil and and Chile both had similar price ranges as Buenos Aires.  Then one day I stumbled upon Guayaquil, Ecuador.  We booked our roundtrip flights from Chicago to Guayaquil (with an overnight stop in Panama City) for $597 a person. Then we booked our roundtrip flights from Guayaquil to Isla Baltra, Galapagos for $302 a person.  We were getting two flights each for $1,000 a person compared to Buenos Aires flights that were over $1,500 a person.
  I have seen many Galapagos packages that travel companies have put together.  I have nothing against these packages but sometimes I wonder how they calculate the costs per person.  One recent package I saw was $2,500 per person for airfare out of Miami, 3 nights in Quito, and 3 nights on a boat in the Galapagos.  I'm sure this is a perfectly nice package but it would have been too expensive for my husband and I.  Plus, our trip was 9 nights instead of 6 nights.  Moving forward with our partial trip breakdown....there are 2 additional fees that foreign visitors have to pay when they go to the Galapagos.  The first fee is a $10 visitor fee and the second fee is a $100 park entrance fee.  All of our hotels had hot, running water, air conditioning and private bathrooms.  Our 9 nights of hotels totaled about $580.  Granted it does cost more to stay on a boat in the Galapagos.
  The total that we paid per person for 2 airfares, hotel costs (divided by two), and entrance fees was about $1,300.  This does not include food, drinks, and activities.
  Hopefully this post has put a little perspective on the costs to visit the Galapagos.  Does it seem a little more affordable for interested visitors?  Are you interested in visiting the Galapagos?

     A view from the shore of Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos

A Tribute to Lonesome George

  Earlier this year I was lucky enough to be able to visit the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.  The Galapagos Islands are a group of volcanic islands located about 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador.  Instead of taking a boat cruise like most people who visit the Galapagos Islands, I stayed in a hotel on the island of Santa Cruz.  The main inhabited area of Santa Cruz is called Puerto Ayora and it is also home to the Darwin Research Center.  At this Center, the giant tortoises of the Galapagos are studied including a tortoise named Lonesome George.  Lonesome George was the last known giant tortoise of his sub-species.  He came from Pinta Island and he was believed to be over 100 years old.  Since Lonesome George was the last of his kind, there was a hope that he would mate with other female giant tortoises from other sub-species so that his DNA would still be passed on.  Mating Lonesome George proved to be unsuccessful and unfortunately on Sunday June 24, 2012, he died.  Above is a photo of Lonesome George in the forefront with a female companion behind him.  It saddens me that a creature as both wonderful and gentle as Lonesome George would be forced into extinction because of mankind.  Giant tortoises were largely exploited by humans for food at the end of the nineteenth century and in the end humans were the ones that attempted to save what they had so long ago damaged.  Lonesome George will be a symbol that will live on and teach people to respect all living creatures and not take lives for granted.