LAVA TUBES AND A POST OFFICE
Our visit to a lava tube showed me just how easy it might be to fall into one.
The early farmers who first found the lava tubes found them because some of their cows went missing, and eventually the farmers found some holes in the ground that disappeared into dark nothingness below.
When the first lava tube opening was discovered, and people with torches could walk inside it, they found bones of large
animals like cows, which had obviously fallen through weak spots in the lava tube ceiling.
We were scheduled to visit a lava tube on the island of Santa Cruz. Because Myrtle had seemed unusually eager to visit the lava tube, my prank-o-meter antennae were tingling.
The morning we visited the tubes the electricity had been out since 7:00 am and we were given flashlights.
We entered the tubes through a break in the surrounding vegetation, which camouflaged them so effectively you would never find them unless you knew where to look.
As we entered, the floor sloped downward, and we were soon in stale underground air in utter darkness, with only the light coming from our flashlights. They bobbed up and down crazily as we all shone them on different spots on the walls or floor.
The guide told us to all focus our lights on the same wall, and he showed us the striations there, telling us that the Galapagos is 4-5 million years old. The horizontal lines formed as successive lava eruptions flowed down the same tubes and the vertical lines were made by the moisture dripping down.
As we went further into the tube, the ceiling got higher and higher until we could no longer see it.
Then the guide told us to turn off our flashlights and have a moment of complete darkness and silence, listening to the sounds inside the lava tube, the quiet dripping of moisture that was building the stalactites and stalagmites, the muffled echoing of our shuffling and coughing, the eerie feeling of being deep down inside the earth.
Suddenly the air was pierced by a great bellow that had all of us jumping and grabbing at each other.
Fortunately, the guide kept his wits and immediately turned on his flashlight, followed in short order by several other brave souls, and we saw our Favorite Travel Mate (Not) jumping around hysterically and pounding his head and shoulders like a madman.
Most of us were too stunned to do more than get out of his way and gape at him, but my flashlight had picked up a piece of fabric on the ground that looked mighty familiar.
Sure enough, Myrtle saw it exactly when I did. With a pretty little squeal she dashed in between bodies to retrieve her scarf, shaking it cleverly as she raised it high and sang out, “My scarf! My scarf! THAT’S where it went to!”
Everyone turned to Myrtle and then to our Favorite Travel Mate (Not) as he stopped jumping around long enough to feel the back of his neck and see that nothing was on it.
Then he looked suspiciously from the scarf to Myrtle, and I could see the accusation ready to burst from his mouth.
But my Myrtle was, as usual, the fastest gun in the west and beat him to the punch by squealing “You found my scarf, you found my beautiful scarf, Oh, thank you, thank you, you wonderful wonderful man!” And she gave him a big smack on his cheek.
Well, as you can imagine, that took the wind out of his sails. He was speechless and quite unable to come up with any suitable rejoinder without looking like a complete cad.
I don’t know if others in the group had put two and two together, but I sure did. In the darkness Myrtle must have rolled her scarf into a long snake and tossed that directly onto the back of our Favorite Travel
Mate (NOT).
I could see from his expression that he had also made that charming little deduction, and all I could think then was that I was glad we would soon be heading home. Who knew how he would decide to retaliate for such a humiliating episode.
Speaking of home, we did visit the first post office in South America, built by whalers (some say pirates) in 1792 on the island of Floreana, also called Santa Maria Island.
Floreana is one of the southernmost islands in the Galapagos, and many ships pass near to the island.
Espanola Island is slightly farther to the south but does not have as good or safe a harbor as the large bay on Floreana.
It was in this bay on Floreana that the first post office was built, the idea being that when ships anchored at Floreana they could pick up or leave mail for succeeding ships. This bay came to be known as Post Office Bay.
When the whaling industry was at its height from 1820-1860, Floreana became a favorite stopping point for whalers to take on fresh water and food, the food being mostly the giant tortoises, unfortunately for them.
It was at this time, of course, that the population of giant tortoises was decimated, and on Floreana Island they became extinct.
The clever system of mail delivery, however, survived and thrived through the centuries and is still going strong today through tourism.
The way it works is that visitors to Floreana leave their own letters or postcards and take letters and postcards that have an address close to their home. Then when they get home they hand-deliver the mail and tell the recipient the story of how they got the mail.
Myrtle and I did leave our postcards there, but found no mail with an address near us, nor did we ever get our mail returned. So, we felt a wee bit gypped. Reports say, however, that every year thousands of letters and postcards are left there or taken to be delivered from all over the world.
Although it is relatively small and lacks the abundance of flora and fauna of some of the larger islands, Floreana may have the most interesting history of all the Galapagos Islands. It is one of the older islands and has the oldest lava tubes in the Galapagos, believed to be 1.5 million years old.
It was the home of the first resident in the Galapagos, an Irish sailor named Patrick Watkins, who got marooned there in 1807 and managed to survive until 1809 by hunting, growing vegetables, and trading with visiting whalers.
But I think the main reason the island is so interesting is that we humans just all love a good story, and even Blue Footed Boobies have a hard time competing with juicy gossip and a really good scandal.
The story of Patrick Watkins, for example, isn’t too far out of the normal as it begins. He is believed to have stolen an open boat and navigated it to Guayaquil, Ecuador. But as the story continues, it gets macabre and spooky and becomes part of the local history and mysterious lore that has given Floreana/Santa Maria Island the title The Mystery Island.
To be continued…