Galapagos Islands offers communion with friendly wildlife and the sea

Lea Ann Schnakenberg, Deutsche Presse-Agentur/On the Pacific Ocean off the Galapagos Islands

Your interaction with the wildlife on the Galapagos Islands begins soon after you leave immigration at the airport. Your welcoming party could well be a nonchalant sea lion flopping at your feet as you wait at the nearby dock to board your tourist ship.

At your next stop, you could be treading lightly again as you head down an island trail where blue-footed boobies make their nests smack-dab in the middle of the path.

These bright-blue-legged seabirds sit on eggs or tend their young, not even flinching as the visiting paparazzi crouch at their nests. They might even lift their aquamarine legs to provide better views of their hatchlings for the cameras.

Their home off Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean is one of the most unique places on earth. The islands' diversity mean penguins co- exist with cacti, and their remote location has nurtured fauna that developed distinctly from the rest of the planet and fed Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

But apart from the islands' scientific value, visitors can get nose-to-snout and nose-to-beak with their fearless wildlife: sea lions and penguins; frigate birds, albatrosses and three types of boobies; sea turtles, giant tortoises and iguanas. Many species are found nowhere else on Earth.

Nature is your constant companion on the Galapagos because only four of the 61 islands in the 50,000-square-kilometer archipelago are inhabited by humans, and the best way to visit the far-flung locations is on a cruise.

After you pay to fly to the islands, book a cruise, pay a 100- dollar park entrance fee and tips to your crew and guide, the trip is certainly pricey, but once you arrive, you quickly understand why the Galapagos were once known as "Las Encantadas", or the Enchanted Isles.

The Galapagos inhabitants have lived without natural predators, meaning they not only accept prying humans but even return their curiosity. Playful hood mockingbirds, for instance, hop on visitors' shoes and sometimes untie their laces.

Other peerless pursuits await the Galapagos visitor. Snorkellers attract circles of acrobatic sea lions or are buzzed by speedy Galapagos penguins, the only penguins to live north of the equator, as white-tipped reef sharks peer shyly from underwater caves.

On land, there are hikes over lava fields, beautiful beaches and cliffs that are home to thousands of seabirds diving for their dinner. Looking out to sea from your own perch, you might even spot a breaching humpback whale.

On ship, there are sunsets as big as the horizon, siestas in hammocks and a ballet of dolphins leaping ahead of the boat.

While wonders await on land and at sea, the pace of life on ship is leisurely. Days begin with breakfast cooked by the crew, followed by a trip to shore. The crew often greets your return with drinks and snacks. Breaks before and after lunch allow time for naps in your cabin, sunbathing on deck, reading in the shade or birdwatching from the top of the ship. Then it's back to shore in the afternoon.

At night, the captain sails to the next stop to maximize your time in the archipelago. Before bedtime, the evenings are filled with meals, drinks and conversation with fellow passengers and a briefing from your guide to prepare you for the next day's adventure - the animals you will see, how they live and how they reproduce.

And some of the mating dances of the sea birds provide the spectacle of a Las Vegas show.

The blue-footed booby does a two-step dance and stretches its beak to the sky while selecting a mate. The islands are home to two other booby species, the red-footed variety and the Nazca booby, a white bird with a Zorro-like black mask. The Nazca male presents a succession of twigs to his amour, much like engagement rings.

The flirtations of the frigatebird is one of the best-known shows on the Galapagos with the males puffing up red sacks on their breasts and beating them with their beaks like bongo drums to draw the attention of the female.

The waved albatrosses, whose gait is reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin, perform a graceless but comic mating dance for hours, punctuated by honks and swordplay with their bills.

But togetherness gets its best display from the islands' marine iguanas. The only truly marine lizards in the world pile next to one another, sometimes by the hundreds, to bask in the sun before diving into the sea to feed on algae.

But beware: To expel ocean salt from their bodies, the iguanas snort out plumes of the stuff, and close observers might take a hit.

At Puerto Ayora, the largest city in the Galapagos with a population of 4,000, visitors get what will probably be their only taste of Galapagos town life with its restaurants, bars, galleries and shops.

The Charles Darwin Research Station is also there with its giant tortoises raised from hatchlings to adults that can reach 270 kilograms. One of the station's residents, and perhaps the Galapagos Islands' most famous inhabitant, is 80-year-old Lonesome George, the last of his tortoise subspecies.

Always at your side is your guide, who not only informs you about what you are seeing but is required to be there by law. To protect the islands' precious flora and fauna, Ecuadorean authorities regulate where ships can anchor, restrict where tourists can venture to marked trails and demand anyone going ashore be escorted.

But you'll be glad to have your guide's expertise in a land that seems much farther away than a plane ride. Its terrain, formed by four millennia of spouting volcanoes, and its abundant, friendly wildlife are almost other-worldly, and so are the experiences there.

On the final day in the Galapagos, many visitors awake for a sunrise boat ride into a mangrove lagoon on Santa Cruz Island. The inlets are bathed in the orangey glow of the rising sun, and only the sound of paddles dipping in the water and the snort of sea turtles prick the silence. Passengers catch their breaths at the sight of schools of rays gliding under their boats and reef sharks drifting alongside.

In such moments, a mixture of serenity and wonder, along with a sadness at having to leave, grip visitors, who find their trips to the Galapagos haunt them long after they leave.