CNH Tours

British nature documentary superstar Sir David Attenborough presents the 2^nd of his 3 part series on Galapagos tonight in the UK (Sky TV), but this time in 3D.   "It is usually a mistake to go back, but I have now returned three times to the Galápagos Islands since my first visit in 1978 and each time the excitement has been undiminished. On my latest trip, indeed, it has been heightened, for I have had the opportunity not only to film the islands in a new medium but - as we disclosed earlier this week - to film an entirely new species" he stated.  He refers to the pink iguana, first documented a few years ago. 

Galapagos documentaries remain very popular, and CNH Tours certainly appreciates the free publicity for this (truly) unique place.  I recall once, after 3 years in the pressure cooker that is Galapagos conservation life in the islands, I took a Christmas holiday in Canada with my family, and we went to the extended family retreat, a small lakeside cottage in the snow.  We started a fire, and distractedly turned on the television, only to be confronted by a, you know it, Galapagos documentary!  

The Galapagos National Park reports that a 74 year old woman died after tripping and falling on the boardwalk at the Cerro Colorado Semi-natural Tortoise Breeding Centre on San Cristobal island yesterday.  Jane White from the USA was on a cruise on the La Pinta ship.  While visiting the tortoise centre, she decided to join a group of three other visitors who were headed off to the restrooms.    She appears to have tripped and knocked her head against the boardwalk as she fell.  She was pronounced dead at the hospital in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, 24 kilometres away.   

No place is risk free, and Galapagos is perhaps a bit riskier than your typical cruise experience.  Not only does a cruise include several short hikes on what can be uneven trails, but you may also find yourself quite far away from professional medical attention.  Anyone considering a Galapagos visit should take that into consideration and be willing to accept these risks.   Of course, the trails are not "death defying" -  thousands of visitors walk over them every year, many well into their 70's and often into their 80's (CNH Tours has no doubts that sprightly folks in their 90's also frequent them).   But accidents may happen.    We are sad to hear of this accident.  

The Galapagos Port Captain reported yesterday that the 20 passenger, tourist superior Galaven yacht had hit some rocks at the Cerro Dragon (NW sector of Santa Cruz Island) and was taking on water.  Passengers were on land while this happened.   The crew was able to control the leak and took the ship to the Canal de Itabaca (which separates Baltra, the airport island, and Santa Cruz island).  The passengers were later taken back to Puerto Ayora.  

Based on this information, it would appear that the Galaven may be out of service of a while.  If you planned to cruise on the Galaven in the next few weeks, CNH Tours recommends you get in touch with your agent as soon as possible.

The town of Puerto Ayora (the main tourist service centre in Galapagos) recently inaugurated a nice "Laguna Las Ninfas" mangrove interpretive boardwalk/trail, with nice panels explaining the ecosystem, both in Spanish and English.  It's just a short walk (e.g. 10 minutes) from downtown - well worth a visit. 

Ecuador no longer has an international airport departure tax.  Until recently, this tax (up to $41) was applied to all out-going travellers.   So, it will be one less hassle to worry about as you make your way through the usual airport gauntlet of line-ups, check-in counters, passport control and security!   This doesn't mean you're necessarily saving money though...  typically, it means that Ecuador was able to reach an agreement with the airlines and their ticketing services so that the tax could be included in the price of your air ticket.  Sorry!  

If it's any comfort, the new airport in Quito (presumably payed in part with airport taxes?) should be opening soon and should offer more comfort and modern services.   The bad news is that the new airport is significantly furhter out of town.  The logistics of all of this in terms of getting people to and from the airport are still being ironed out by the entire tourism (and other) industries - but CNH Tours is sure things will quickly settle in.

We are taking the liberty to copy/paste a good article from the Huff Post on-line, below.   More evidence on the fact that it's a lot better to keep the critters from arriving in the first place, than to try to clean up after they've arrived.  So, when you're going through the bio-security check at the Quito or Guayaquil airport on your way to Galapagos - please take a moment to appreciate the very hard work involved in setting up and ensuring the effective operation of this very complex multi-institutional effort.   It was developed during the years CNH Tours was working at the Charles Darwin Research Station and the Galapagos National Park Service (1998-2002). Our firiend. close colleague at the time, and master entomologist, Charlotte Causton, played a key role in the process (along with many others).  She left Galapagos several years ago, but recently returned to head the Station's Research Department.

From Huff Post On-line

Nov 15 2012

The unique bird and reptile species that make the Galapagos Islands a treasure for scientists and tourists must be preserved, Ecuadorean authorities say - and that means the rats must die, hundreds of millions of them.

A helicopter is to begin dropping nearly 22 tons of specially designed poison bait on an island Thursday, launching the second phase of a campaign to clear out by 2020 non-native rodents from the archipelago that helped inspire Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

The invasive Norway and black rats, introduced by whalers and buccaneers beginning in the 17th century, feed on the eggs and hatchlings of the islands' native species, which include giant tortoises, lava lizards, snakes, hawks and iguanas. Rats also have depleted plants on which native species feed.

The rats have critically endangered bird species on the 19-island cluster 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from Ecuador's coast.

"It's one of the worst problems the Galapagos have. (Rats) reproduce every three months and eat everything," said Juan Carlos Gonzalez, a specialist with the Nature Conservancy involved in the Phase II eradication operation on Pinzon island and the islet of Plaza Sur.

Phase I of the anti-rat campaign began in January 2011 on Rabida island and about a dozen islets, which like Pinzon and Plaza Sur are also uninhabited by humans.

The goal is to kill off all nonnative rodents, beginning with the Galapagos' smaller islands, without endangering other wildlife. The islands where humans reside, Isabela and Santa Cruz, will come last.

Previous efforts to eradicate invasive species have removed goats, cats, burros and pigs from various islands.

Pinzon is about seven square miles (1,812 hectares) in area, while Plaza Sur encompasses just 24 acres (9.6 hectares).

"This is a very expensive but totally necessary war," said Gonzalez.

The rat infestation has now reached one per square foot (about 10 per square meter) on Pinzon, where an estimated 180 million rodents reside.

The director of conservation for the Galapagos National Park Service, Danny Rueda, called the raticide the largest ever in South America.

The poisoned bait, developed by Bell Laboratories in the United States, is contained in light blue cubes that attract rats but are repulsive to other inhabitants of the islands. The one-centimeter-square cubes disintegrate in a week or so.

Park official Cristian Sevilla said the poison will be dropped on Pinzon and Plaza Sur through the end of November.

A total of 34 hawks from Pinzon were trapped in order to protect them from eating rodents that consume the poison, Sevilla said. They are to be released in early January.

On Plaza Sur, 40 iguanas were also captured temporarily for their own protection.

Asked whether a large number of decomposing rats would create an environmental problem, Rueda said the poison was specially engineered with a strong anti-coagulant that will make the rats dry up and disintegrate in less than eight days without a stench.

It will help that the average temperature of the islands is 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celsius), he added.

The current $1.8 million phase of the project is financed by the national park and nonprofit conservation groups including Island Conservation.

The Galapagos were declared protected as a UNESCO Natural Heritage site in 1978. In 2007, UNESCO declared them at risk due to harm from invasive species, tourism and immigration.

This is not usually something CNH Tours takes much interest in.  Still, we couldn't help but notice that "Surfing Magazine" has selected the Galapagos Islands as the backdrop for its 2013 calendar "Miss Reef" calendar - you can imagine what that's all about!  We won't grace our website with their pictures - sorry!  They announced this today - it's part of a "five-year series of Miss Reef Calendars shot entirely in Latin America, an effort to bring the brand back to its Latin roots" they say.

Still, we think it's worth noting those efforts to educate the surfer community on the natural values of those areas they surf in - no matter how they do it.   One concern for the conservation of Galapagos is the growth of land based tourism - it has been growing so fast in the past 10-15 years that the government authorities has had troubles managing it, resulting in hotels being built without permission, or even onto park lands - a growing underground tourism sector, operating outside the law, undermining the establishment of standards and depriving local communities of tax contributions to building schools and maintaining municipal services. 

It's important for the surfer community to understand these issues, and play an active part in ensuring that the tourism services they rely on in Galapagos (hotels, restaurants etc.) are part of the formal economy, and having a positive impact on the communities in which they are embedded.  

The Galapagos National Park Service announced yesterday that it will close South Plaza Island to tourism from November 17 to December 17th this year, to carry out a rat eradication campaign there.

Besides the small rice rat (not present on South Plaza), other rats are not native to Galapagos.  The black and norway rats were introduced as early as the 17th century, when various ships began stopping in Galapagos in the search for fresh water or food.   Highly invasive, these rats represent a major threat to many native Galapagos species, including ground nesting birds (rats will kill and eat chicks), baby giant tortoises below the age of 2 or 3 years (they will also be eaten) and various other species. Because the also climb trees, rats are also predators of tree nesting eggs and chicks.

Eradicating rats from an island (e.g. making sure you leave not even one rat alive) is a very tough job.  The Charles Darwin Research Station has developed various techniques designed to ensure that only alien rats are targetted, and that do not harm other wildlife. The Park Service with the support from the Station have successfully eradicated rats from other small islands - and now it's South Plaza's turn.

If South Plaza was on your itinerary during this time, you will instead be taking a panga ride around the island, and do some snorkeling there.

After 60 years of (literally) religious care, Pepe, most likely the plumpest Galapagos tortoise alive, is being moved from the backyard of the local church in San Cristobal island (Puerto Baquerizo Moreno) to a more natural environment in the Galapagos National Park Service's tortoise pen.

CNH Tours first met Pepe in 1998 and has visited him a few times since. He was kept in a large enough enclosure with a big tree and a pond. But given his condition, we didn't think he was too interested in stretching his legs too much! As a local "off the beaten path" attraction, Pepe was often visited by families, children and the occasional tourist who somehow found out about him. For a very modest fee, the local pastor and his staff would let you into Pepe's enclosure, giving you a few bananas to feed him.

Having grown accustomed to being fed bananas by visitors, Pepe always greeted people by extending his neck as far as possible, and by opening in mouth as widely as possible, giving the casual observer the best opportunity ever to inspect the anatomy of the soft tissues inside a live Galapagos tortoise's mouth. However, he also started "running" towards visitors that way - as much as a tortoise can run that is. So, inside his pen, holding a banana, you had to be on your guard. You couldn't simply just move ahead of him to get out of his reach, and then get distracted, because before you knew it - Pepe would be upon you! It gives credence to the "Tortoise and the Hare" fable indeed!

Over the years, with this kind of diet (remember, in the wild, they eat grass or cactus leaves…), Pepe developed a double, even a triple chin! As much as the late George may have been lonesome, Pepe can be considered happy - Happy Pepe! We'll see how he likes his new "natural" home at the Park offices, and what kind of diet he'll have to get used to!

CNH Tours recommends you take the time to visit Happy Pepe if you are in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. Just keep a step ahead of him!

Here is another great example of why it's so important to conserve biodiversity. 

Researchers in the Netherlands, working at developing pest resistant strains of tomatoes, find that the Galapagos tomato is the most resistant of all.   The whitefly is a major problem for outdoor tomato farming throughout the world. Scientists of Wageningen University, together with a number of partners have discovered genes for resistance to the whitefly in a wild relative of the common tomato - the Galapagos tomato. The scientists hope that resistant varieties can be brought to market within two years, making chemical pest control unnecessary.

This is small wild tomato native to the Galapagos Islands and resistant to drought .  The tomatoes are smaller than cherry tomatos and ripen to a yellow-orange color.  They are edible, with a good, typical acid tomato flavor.

 When first in Galapagos, CNH Tours was surprised to spot wild tomatoes there  - how did it come to be here? Tomatoes were endemic to Central America and were brought all over the world in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.   It's most likely that a bird carried seeds, either in its gut, or stuck to feathers, all the way to the islands, a long long time ago.