Ecuador Trip: Day 12
Galapagos Cruise: Day 7
Ahhhhhh, Genovesa Island. My favorite island of Week 1 of our two-week Galapagos Island cruise last April. If you look on a map, Genovesa appears out of the way. And it is. Also known as Tower Island, it’s the furthest island you can visit (by that I mean stop and climb up and have a look around). The other “far out” islands, Marchena and Pinta, are off-limits to tourists, although you might find diving tours that will take you to them and allow you to dive in the nearby waters (like with Wolf and Darwin, two acclaimed diving islands in the G.I.), but you can’t disembark onto the northern islands themselves. Aside from Genovesa.
For this reason alone, when I chose the boat for our cruise, I restricted my choices to those that included Genovesa Island in their itineraries. I would love to visit the Galapagos Islands again, but the sad fact is I probably won’t. Unless I win the lottery and/or decide to take up diving and return to explore the diving sites. Not because I didn’t love the Islands—my memories of my Galapagos adventures will live with me until I’m in the ground—but because there are so many other places in the world I want to see…and I started the travel game a little late in life.
Ahhhh, Genovesa, I’d love to touch your “shores” again!
I can not stress enough how much I enjoyed Genovesa Island. How much I would encourage you to include it in your Galapagos travel plans. Honestly, it’s not to be missed (Travel Tip Tip TIP!). The only island that came close in terms of bird life was Espanola, which we visited on Week 2 of our cruise. Espanola is amazing. But only Genovesa is Genovesa. Genovesa made me feel, at times, like I was in a Hitchcock film. I took a little video called “Birds, Birds, Birds” which you can access on my Facebook page (click that link to visit the page, then click “like” ON the page, then click the Photos link, then click the “Videos” link, then click “Birds, Birds, Birds.”) The video gives you an idea of the “mood” of Genovesa. Our guide was instructing us about cactus life and I was enthralled with the birds swarming above me. Bad, I know. I could not help myself. At one point, we just stood there as a group (after encountering various forms of bird life during our walk) and watched and listened in silence as nature blossomed in her glory around us. If you visit Espanola before visiting Genovesa, I dunno, the effect of Genovesa might not be the same. Except, something stood out on Genovesa that we didn’t encounter anywhere else. And that was the fun of getting there.
We needed to climb “El Barranco,” otherwise known as Prince Philip’s Steps or “The Cliff” to reach the top of Genovesa (which was flat once we arrived). I don’t have a picture of us approaching the Island in the pangas, but here’s one of the steps we had to descend again at the end: