The Ballad of Lonesome George (cont.)

You Are Here:

Home >> Travel >> The Ballad of Lonesome George (cont.)

Today's Question
Where should I camp in Switzerland with my kids? answer

What's the best volcano to hike up in North America? answer

How can I plan a trip around riding the biggest, fastest roller coasters? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside Magazine January 2001

Page:

The Ballad of Lonesome George (cont.)

AFTER TWO HOURS CROSSING the ocean, the nearly full jet flops down on a tiny spot in the Pacific, the island of Baltra, which sports a leftover airstrip built by the United States during World War II, and not much else. The only building in sight is the airport, and the first impression is of an intense stillness. Parched tangles of desert vegetation and cacti stretch off to the distance, swept by a ceaseless warm ocean wind. A few flitting black finches—Darwin's finches—and a single land iguana, a heavy yellow lizard as fat as a house cat but with its own reptilian half-smile, are the only signs of life. Park guards search the bags of all arrivals, looking not for contraband but for nonnative insects, seeds, and animals.

There are only a few dozen hotel rooms in the islands; most visitors sleep at sea, joining scheduled cruises that leave from Baltra or traveling by bus and ferry to the largest town in the islands, Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz, to charter a boat and guide. Some 97 percent of the land in the islands belongs to Galápagos National Park. Camping, where it's allowed at all, is by permit only and is complicated by the scarcity of water. Whether on a cruise or a charter, all visitors must be guided on land by naturalists licensed by the National Park Service, who are trained to protect the tourist from the islands and, more important, the islands from the tourist. Herein lies the paradox of Galápagos-touring: Whether you're a bungee-jumping, gonzo-adventuring yahoo or a little old lady in tennis shoes, you must keep to the same trails and follow the same rules.

I embark for a week on the MSPolaris, an 80-passenger, 238-foot ship, operated by Lindblad Expeditions, that's one of the largest in the islands. My fellow passengers include birders, sketch-artists, and mad-dog video enthusiasts with cameras the size of sea lions. It being October, a low-tourist month, the ship's only about half full, so we head to the islands in groups of eight to ten in the Polaris's Zodiacs. Our expedition leader is Lynn Fowler, a familiar figure in the Galápagos, who coordinates our hiking and snorkeling trips (and makes sure nobody gets left behind when we return to the Polaris). The niece of animal wrangler Jim Fowler (Marlin Perkins's sidekick on the old Wild Kingdom TV series), Lynn first toured the islands in 1976 and fell in love with them so intensely that she sat in the Baltra airport and sobbed when it was time to leave. She returned a few years later as one of the first women admitted into the national park's naturalist program. After marrying an Ecuadoran ship captain, having two children, and starting a school at her farm on the Ecuadoran coast, Fowler (who is now divorced) began guiding for Lindblad and private groups in the early 1980s. She has baited sharks for Peter Benchley in one television special and snorkeled with Alan Alda in another. At nearly six feet tall, with long blond hair, she is an impressive figure in a wetsuit.

Fowler completed the work for her doctorate in 1980 by living alone for a year on the rim of one of the volcanoes on largely uninhabited Isabela Island, studying the impact of introduced donkeys on the resident subspecies of giant tortoise. She became renowned throughout the islands for going about naked on her own personal volcano (the clothes on her back literally rotted), and she was awoken one night by earthquakes; the volcano next door was exploding.

Page: