Land of the tortoise

Galápagos Islands tick to geological time, in a place where humans are utterly foreign

PUERTO BAQUERIZO MORENO, Ecuador -- Few places on the planet are more appropriate to contemplate a sea journey than the Miraflores Locks, on the western end of the Panama Canal. It is a balmy March evening, and the red tropical sun hangs low over the jungle-covered hills.

At eye level a container ship slides silently by. The size of a lengthwise Chrysler Building and stacked high with multicolored metal boxes, it slips into the lock, and great steel gates swing closed as the 65,000-ton ship is lowered in its final stage from Lake Gatún. The lower gates open like the doors of a cathedral, and the enormous vessel is pulled forward by tow lines. It fires up its engines and churns toward the Pacific.

I have come to Panama to join a ship. Not a tanker or freighter bound for the Far East, but a 48-foot, two-masted sailboat named the Shangri La, owned and captained by my college friend Andrew Whyte and his wife, Francesca. Our primary destination is the Galápagos Islands, a two-week sail to the southwest across a thousand miles of open water.

Andrew and Francesca know what they are doing. They've sailed around the world braving everything from storms to Somali pirates.

The little white ketch bobs like a bath toy in the wakes of passing freight vessels. I take a launch from the dock and join the other five crew mates aboard. At 32, I am the oldest. Everyone else is in his or her mid-20s, just as Charles Darwin was when he sailed to the Galápagos aboard the Beagle in 1835.

I've long had a fascination with ships and the sea, a passion limited by my tendency to get terribly seasick. This is one of the few traits I share with the young Darwin. Serving as the expedition's naturalist, he was violently ill for almost the entirety of the Beagle's five-year circumnavigation. Two weeks I think I can handle, but as a precaution I am carrying enough Dramamine to tranquilize a humpback.

The skyline of Panama City vanishes in the morning haze as we head out to the open sea. Setting the luffing white sails to a steady wind, Andrew puts us on a starboard tack, and the Shangri La plows happily southward. In a few hours, we are alone in the Pacific.

Our little group soon falls into a workable routine to sail the ship. We divide the clock into two-hour watches at the wheel, and I pull the 2-to-4 shift, a.m. and p.m. The rest of the day is filled with reading, talking and dozing in the shade.

Days blend into one another. We cross the Doldrums, the vast belt of low pressure and light wind that girdles the equator. We don't see a single other ship, but there is plenty of life. Terns rest on the ship's rail, pods of pilot whales breech beside us, and dolphins surf in our bow wake. We even spot a huge solitary leatherback turtle, paddling its way to the Galápagos for its spring migration.

At dawn on the 14th day out from Panama a rosy smudge appears on the horizon, barely discernible from the smoky convergence of sea and sky. "I see it!" Francesca shouts.

There, rising 500 feet straight out of the still water, is the volcanic tuff cone León Dormido, "Sleeping Lion." The rock serves as a sentinel to the Galápagos archipelago. Behind it the low green island of San Cristóbal comes into view.

A lab for life

When Darwin arrived at San Cristóbal (then called Chatham Island) on Sept. 17, 1835, he remarked in his journal: "Nothing could be less inviting than the first appearance. A broken field of black, basaltic lava is everywhere covered by stunted, sun-burnt brushwood, which shows little signs of life." He had little inkling that the signs of life he observed there would lead to one of the most revolutionary theories in the history of science.