It’s true that no matter where we happen to be, we’re always happy to see boobies. It’s even more true than usual here in the Galapagos, which is the place that made the Blue Footed Boobie one of the most famous bird species ever. This was one of the birds that captured Charles Darwin’s interest during his time in the Galapagos in the 1830’s. He found that the color of the male boobie’s feet was a signal to female boobies that the male is healthy, well fed, young, and thus capable of looking after her and her offspring. That the females chose mates with the brightest blue feet was a form of natural selection which caused the blue footed gene to pass through to future generations, weeding out the boobies with other colored feet in the process.

Looking at the exotic creatures in the Galapagos and admiring their unusual features is a huge part of what makes the Galapagos so interesting. But if that’s all you find here, you’ve missed a big part of what the Galapagos is all about. Every species and sub-species here has an interesting story like that of the boobies about why its physical or behavioral characteristics were somehow helpful for its survival and reproduction, and trying to figure out why the animals evolved the way they did makes the Galapagos experience unique. If your mind is open and alert, you can learn a lot about life just by studying the wildlife and thinking to yourself about why the things you’re seeing are the way they are. The long bird beaks, the rugged tortoise shells, the shape of the hammerhead shark’s head, the spikes on the iguanas’ backs, and the fire red color of the crabs are just some examples of interesting traits that have helped these animals survive the unique conditions of their own habitats, but the list is endless, and that’s why you could probably spend a few years here and not get bored. We probably aren’t the first visitors to come to the Galapagos and wonder about the process for becoming an Ecuadorian naturalist.

But for the time being we’ve committed ourselves to a different type of endeavor that permits no more time for exploring this group of islands. The islands of the South Pacific are still over 3000 miles away and the clock is now ticking on the upcoming cyclone season that will force us to get through the South Pacific and into the Arafura Sea north of Australia by mid December, meaning every day is now precious. We’ll again have far less time than we need to see everything there, a condition we’re now so used to that it no longer bothers us… almost certainly this won’t be our last time through this part of the world in this lifetime.

The next three weeks will take us through one of the most remote and untraveled places in the world – it’s unlikely we’ll see another boat during the three week passage, nor a bird, and some people tell us we’re unlikely even to catch a fish (which won’t stop us trying). Our remoteness limits our ability to communicate as our normal onboard satellite internet connection is out of range, forcing us onto a more expensive network with data costs that are outrageous ($13 per megabyte instead of our usual $1). We will try to update our blog (www.tamariskrtw.com) during our passage, but if you’re following our journey on Facebook you probably won’t see much till we touch land next month – we’re OK, please don’t panic. Conditions look excellent for a departure this morning, so we’re loading up with fruits and veggies and will be pulling the anchor for our longest ocean passage yet in about two hours.

At an earlier time in human history, before the development of the large field of study we now think of as the natural sciences, there were no answers to mankind’s most fundamental questions about life, the Earth, the universe, and as humans, who or what we are. These large gaps in human knowledge caused people to turn to religion for answers. This expansive and empowered role for religion persisted for many centuries and has been at the very center of how human society developed over the years. But there were chinks in religion’s armor. First it was the theorizing of the astronomer Copernicus, whose observations led him to claim the Earth was not at the center of the universe, in dramatic contradiction to the religious promises that a God (or Gods) designed things with us at the center. Then it was Galileo and Isaac Newton, whose observations of “heavenly” bodies undeniably put us on a map inside a Solar System of planets held together by gravity, with a sun at its center. These findings were so enlightening, and the societal changes that resulted so significant, that this period in human history when we began shedding religious beliefs in favor of scientific ones is now called the Copernican Revolution. The “revolution” was one of thought that forever altered the role of religion, but still it left wide open many questions about humanity and our origins. For our most fundamental question, “who are we”, religion remained the authority.

We’re now in the Galapagos Islands, 600 miles off the Ecuadorian mainland coast. The Galapagos are famous for their exotic and diverse wildlife, and after three days of exploring, we think it deserves its reputation. It’s impossible to overstate the historical significance of these remote islands. It was here in 1837 where the naturalist Charles Darwin made discoveries that answered many of our remaining questions about life (at least in the physical world) and where humans come from. That, like all other life, we evolved from single-cell organic muck was an uncomfortable but profound truth that again altered the intellectual boundaries of the religious sphere and its institutional power structures, with a result that’s changed the direction of all human history since then.

The entire group of Galapagos Islands is a protected national park with a diverse population of animal wildlife that in many ways has no equal anywhere on the planet. Unlike most wildlife reserves, it is the remoteness of the islands, instead of overly burdensome rules and restrictions, that’s preserved the Galapagos wildlife from both natural predators and from the effects of human meddling and trampling. We’ve been mostly free to interact with the animals, and they seem totally disinterested and un-bothered by our presence. We’ve been swimming with sea lions and turtles, sharing beaches with iguanas and crowds of crabs, and feeding giant tortoises in the highland area. The experience here is unlike any we’ve had so far, and its impossible to leave without adopting a new interest and respect for nature and its diverse creatures.

All of our time so far has been spent on Santa Cruz island, which is the main touristic hub in the Galapagos. We haven’t yet found the finches and famous Blue Footed Boobie birds that ultimately led to Darwin’s history-changing On the Origin of Species, so we’re planning our excursions for the next couple days to the more remote islands where the boobies are easier to find. In the mean time we’re pondering a theory of our own about how we might get back to the Galapagos again someday. It’s clear already that our one week in the Galapagos won’t be nearly enough.