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Roberto Plaza is the owner of Montemar, a sustainable farm on Santa Cruz Island dedicated to Galapagos giant tortoise conservation. In 2010, Roberto and his wife, Reyna, began growing Arabic coffee on abandoned pasture land. The coffee flourished under the shade of tropical fruits and native trees, which the couple painstakingly planted.
They should be! A recent study by The Nature Conservancy revealed the benefits of tourism on mangrove forests. Though they are not always the star of the show, mangrove forests are widely visited by tourists. Over 4,000 mangrove attractions across 93 countries bring out millions of visitors.
The ocean environment is a place where we, as humans, do not belong. It’s cold, full of confusing and potentially dangerous animals, and, thanks to our air-needy lungs, it will kill us without adequate equipment.
The new year rang in a landmark win for conservation in the Galapagos as land iguanas were reintroduced to Santiago Island for the first time in 184 years. One of the last people to record land iguanas, Conolophus subcristatus, on Santiago was the celebrated naturalist Charles Darwin in 1835.
I met Reyna Oleas, owner of MonteMar on a misty Saturday morning off a dirt road nestled beneath stands of banana, guava and scalesia trees.
On the roof deck of our yacht, the Letty, this urbanite views the stars in their full brilliance for the first time in a year. As I lay there, space and time conflate – presently I gaze into the past as time flows on in this magical place, the Galápagos.
The most memorable part of my Galapagos trip, without question, was the snorkeling. Initially, I was a little scared of this element of the trip because I’m not exactly a fish in the water, but the instruction of the expert guides, safety equipment in the water, and buoyancy of the wetsuits made the experience stress-free.
Snorkeling with sea lions, penguins and sea turtles, oh my! Hiking with endemic Galapagos animals, including iguanas, beautiful birds, giant tortoises and more. If you have the chance to visit the Galapagos Islands 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, go for it. You will not be disappointed.
By Camie Kirkevold, Administrative Assistant at Natural Habitat Adventures I was looking forward to reconnecting with the world—the real world. Not the one I stare into all day, wondering who is doing what and what my next post will be. Or the other worlds that suck my time from the precious days.
When you finally land in the Galapagos Islands, your eye is immediately drawn up and out. Up to the sky, to see the many birds soaring and whizzing past—was that a Nazca boobie? Was it a rare lava gull? And out, to scan the ocean’s horizon for a whale’s spout or surfacing sea turtle.
“I am a biologist and when I retired, Galapagos was first on my bucket list. Even more than my curiosity about the unique wildlife on the islands was my keen interest to see the sea life in the ocean.
[Excerpts from Adventure Guide to Ecuador & the Galapagos Islands, by Peter D. Krahenbuhl] One of the most amazing and interesting facts about the Galapagos Islands is their role in influencing our understanding of the evolution of life on Earth.
