Recalling Ecuador

One of the most interesting places I've ever been is Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.

In 1990, when Wendy and I were planning our honeymoon, we'd planned to go to India. Especially the northern, Moslem, area. Then Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. It was pretty clear we were going to war and the time frame looked to coincide with our honeymoon. Hm. Going to a Moslem country when the USA is at war with a Moslem country. Could be heaven. Could be hell. We went to Ecuador. Two weeks bumming around the country capped off with a week in the Galapagos.

I won't list here all the things we did and the point at which the vacation became an adventure. That's for another post.

But I will talk for a moment about the tortoises.

Everybody's seen pictures of them. They are amazing and wonderful beasts. They don't have any particular fear of man-- something that has not done them well. They looks like boulders with the breath of life.

At one point, we went up into the highlands on Puerto Ayora. The weather of the islands have the lower altitudes dry and the upper altitudes have more rain. This, of course, makes for a greater plant life and also make the higher farmland more attractive. It also is a place where the tortoises like to go to forage. So, in the grasslands, we found tortoises.

They liked to eat in a line. They would rest in a good spot, munch grass for a while, then reach out their elephantine legs and drag themselves forward a little bit, eat some more grass. The locals have trouble keeping them out. They can't kill them and when they cart them down the hill, they come back.

However, humans are nothing if not ingenious. They found that if they take a tortoise and tilt him on his back or sides, in a way he can't recover back to his feet, for a day and then cart him back down the hill, he doesn't come back. Tortoises can remember some things.

So, in this anniversary of Darwin's birth, I remember his tortoises. If I lived farther south, I'd like to raise them.

The largest of them, Goliath, is nearly 900 pounds: here.
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