Galapagos location and the wind & oceanic currents

I spoke with some of the staff about tourism in the islands. Eduardo, a three generation Galapagan(?), thinks that tourists bring more problems than solutions. Most tourists come in boat tours and don’t spend much money or time on the actual islands. He says that the owners of these cruises and big boats are foreigners or rich people from the mainland so the profits don’t stay here. He says that most of the tourists that spend more time on the island are backpackers who don’t want to spend a lot of money .

I told him that at least most of the establishments in the islands: restaurants, bars, grocery stores, hotels, are owned by local people and not foreigners (unlike Nicaragua).

Eduardo also told me that their government representatives always tell the president that everything is fine in Galapagos. That they don’t need any help but there are environmental issues.

Something that shocked me about the islands is the standard of living. There are no people panhandling, there are no drunks passed out on the side walk, there aren’t any people going through the trash or living under black tarps. Everyone has a concrete house with floors, the kids go to school, and the grownups work. There aren’t any gangs and it’s safe to walk around at night. There almost isn’t any crime either. This has a lot to do with the fact that the population is really small and all the families know each other so if something happens, you know who it is. So at plain site, it does seem like everything is fine in the Galapagos. They definitely have a better quality of life than most people on the mainland…

I also spoke with the director of my program, who was also born and raised in the island of San Cristobal, Galapagos. He says that, as in any place, there is corruption here too. The delicate environment of the islands has been compromised to satisfy the economic interests of these politicians who own certain hotels or boats. He said something else I hadn’t thought about. In the town of Puerto Barquerizo Moreno there is a beautiful boardwalk made out of wood, with solar powered lights, and benches and a rail. He says that this costs about $4 million. There used to be a beach all along the boardwalk but now it has been all blocked off and filled with concrete. The director says that they plan on continuing this blockage of the beaches and making it more difficult for locals to access their own beaches. All because someone left to Miami and saw their boardwalk and wanted something similar here.

This reminded me of the beaches in Nicaragua. Specially the beaches near San Juan del Sur where this is  already happening.

It’s very hard to say what is sustainable or not in the Galapagos. I think islands in general can’t really be sustainable. They are isolated so they need a lot of things imported, the flora and fauna are very delicate so small changes in the weather can create disasters (Like El Nino in 1983 which decimated the population of sea lions), and yeah, the human population is vulnerable to natural disasters.

Most tourists don’t stay long enough to know the impact they are having. The amount of resources it takes to accommodate them: the fuel for their boats, their waste, the energy they require, etc. I don’t think having tourism as the major profit producing industry is sustainable either. The tourism and fishing boats fight all the time in Galapagos (and in other places I’m sure too). Fishing alone is not a solution either… There is no exact solution.