Plunge Deep Into An Animal Kingdom

On a cruise around the Galápagos Islands, PETER HELLER encounters the archipelago’s diverse native species—and walks away humbled by their beauty.

- Peter Heller

The sun was settling into the Pacific, and they were dancing on the beach. Two blue-footed boobies. These are seabirds that can fold themselves into missiles and corkscrew into the ocean at 60 miles per hour. But right now, they were two yards away and slowly high stepping toward each other on their outsize webbed, very blue feet. One, presumably the male, offered his sweetheart a twig.

“Did you see that?” I murmured. “Him giving her the twig?”

“Always works for me,” my wife, Kim, replied.

Shortly after touching down on Baltra Island, we boarded our cruise ship, the Celebrity Xperience, and had barely unpacked before sailing off to see the wildlife. At this first stop, the tiny island of North Seymour, we saw magnificent frigate birds—that’s their name, Fregata magnificens—soaring close overhead on black and angled wings eight feet across, like remnants of the age of pterodactyls. No sooner had I set foot on a trail inland than I had to step between a yellow land iguana and a seagull, and then around two sea lions. Each opened an eye, rubbed its back into the sand, and went back to sleep.

It was like walking through that painting by Henri Rousseau, The Dream— remember the nude in the forest with the lions and birds? The peace that reigned, the innocence. We hadn’t been in the Galápagos a day, and already this was the strangest and wildest place I’d ever seen.