- [David] Volcanoes are the source of life.

In Ecuador they play multiple roles.

On one hand, they created the Galapagos, the odd island chain with its charismatic wildlife.

On the other, they produced peaks four miles high that capture moisture and release it, providing water for Ecuador's teeming population.

In the beginning, there were volcanoes.

- [Announcer] Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Agnese Haury.

Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was also provided by the Guilford Fund.

(upbeat music) (soft guitar music) - Ecuador is often divided into three regions: Galapagos, at the sea level, the mountains, and the Amazon.

We start in the Galapagos, which are part of the nation of Ecuador.

When you get to Galapagos, what do you have?

Volcanoes.

- Right there we have the youngest volcano on Isabela Island.

All the lava flows that we have in front of us have a different type of age.

This is very interesting to understand how's the beginning of life on the Galapagos Island.

We have first these black lava fields without any plants or any animals living.

Will take more than one or 2,000 years to have some vegetation growing over there.

One of the first plant that will colonize this type of harsh environment are cactus, escalasias, and tiquilia plants.

After have those type of vegetation, they will produce a lot of organic soil, they will attract some clouds to have rain, and the rest of the vegetation is gonna use this type of organic sources on the ground to keep growing.

And, we will have the big animals coming to use this type of vegetation, like a land iguana, like a lava lizard, like a giant tortoise, and a lot of seabirds will use this type of landscapes for nesting in the future, they can use this land to make the nest, to feed the baby ones, and the place to find food is that bay.

That is the best nutrients in the water are between the volcanoes, between Ferdinand and Isabela, is the main upwelling production, most of the marine wildlife on the Galapagos Islands are breeding over there.

That means all the big predators of the ocean likes to concentrate in this type of water to be feeding all different type of preys.

(mellow guitar music) - It's sort of a surprise to find flamingos in the Galapagos, which are known to be very, very dry.

But, there are a few places where seawater gets left behind when the tide goes low, and the water becomes brackish, and a tiny shrimp develops.

The Galapagos has its own very specific species of shrimp, and that's what the flamingos like best of all.

(mellow guitar music) One of the outstanding bird life parts of the Galapagos is the blue-footed booby.

In some places there are thousands of them, they are involved in mating dances.

They're doing extremely well here.

Their feet are an astonishingly bright, iridescent blue.

The blue, it comes from the diet that they have, the fish and the shellfish that they get, they can derive the dyes from that, and the bluer, the healthier they are.

(upbeat guitar music) (people speaking foreign language) We're here right in the heart of lobster harvesting season, and the boats are out, the fishermen are pulling them in.

And, there is a boat right next to us where the guys are cleaning them and offering them for sale.

- [Man] (speaks foreign language) - Apparently some of my comrades have a hankering for lobster meat, so there will be a transaction take place on the open seas.

Meanwhile, the frigate birds are sensing an opportunity to glom on to some free food themselves, so it's gonna be a competition between the tourists, the fishermen, and the frigate birds, and then, anything living in the sea that can jump up in between.

(upbeat guitar music) This little island is called Island of Tintoreras, and it is the sanctuary for the white-tipped reef shark.

So, they're not a huge shark, but they are notably found in the Galapagos, and you can get up fairly close to them and not have to worry about being eaten by a shark.

So, they are a very special attraction here in this little island named for them.

If anything is typical of the Galapagos, it is the variety both of animal life, plant life, and habitats.

Behind me is the ocean.

I'm walking next to an immense, and apparently mostly dead lava field, and here I'm walking next to a living, thriving mangrove forest.

Four different kinds of mangrove live in here, and these mangrove swamps, which are huge, are really the cradle of life in the ocean.

When these are gone, sea life goes with them.

(mellow guitar music) One of the strangest features I have seen in the Galapagos is this lava field, which is a little more than half a million years old, but covered with white lichen.

There are actually four or five kinds of lichen, but the lichen gives it this ghostly effect, and if we look very close, we can see that it is actually disintegrating the rock.

Lichens have that function, but to look over this, it looks like something out of Middle Earth.

(mellow guitar music) This is a gregarious convention of marine iguanas of various sizes.

They all get together here adds some protection because some herons will actually eat these, and they hae a small owl that will eat the young ones, so there's a combination of big ones and small ones, and the small one get under the big ones.

One male marine iguana will be in charge of this whole bunch and they don't like other males coming in to their area.

They'll have an area maybe 10, 20 square feet.

But, this one in this particular lava field has come up out of the ocean through this very rough lava to get warm and to seek protection.

We're walking at the edge of a lava field out onto a little sandy ridge, and there is a colony of sea lions, including a two or three day old baby.

(baby sea lion braying) - [Pablo] It's very tiny, if you take a look, these have strong muscles in their fins to walk easily over the sandy area.

- [David] Now, what is her pose telling us?

When she has her head straight up?

- That is not saying any signs for us, she wants to stretch only the muscles of the body.

You can see that one's over there, all the time they are stretching like this similar like, like us, like humans.

And now you can see, the baby when he's looking for one opportunity to get the milk, and he's biting the mom.

- [David] Now is he able to nuzzle her is she withholding that?

- [Pablo] She's gonna be able to recognize, especially with their sounds, the best way to communicate between them, is sounds, after they hear the sounds, they approach to the baby one, and to be sure that's their own baby would have to smell them.

That's another female.

Looks pregnant, look at the size of her belly.

(mellow guitar music) - [David] They know each other, though, they're friends.

- [Pablo] They know each other are friends.

He's looking for the baby one, man.

- [David] There comes another mom.

- Another mom.

No, it's a young male.

- It's a young male, and she's "get the heck out of here."

- And the other young male is coming to protect the place.

- So he's gonna drive out these two, huh?

He says "get away."

- Look at there, he's moving away.

- So, the baby knows that one, then, the baby recognizes the smell.

- Yeah, the baby can recognize the smell, and the baby one doesn't like to be with the other ones, only with their own mom.

There is no real information known how long is the life span.

Average can be 20 to 25 years old.

A female sea lion is gonna reach their sexual maturity three to five years old, and a male sea lion is gonna reach their sexual maturity about eight or nine years old.

After reaching sexual maturity, the females are mating with a male, and they can have one baby a year.

There were some fertile female sea lions that Charles Darwin was researching until 20, 22 years old, they are still fertile.

On the islands.

(sea lions fussing) - [David] So, what are these guys doing?

Is this a young male?

- This one we have the young male sea lion that is trying to conquer these young females.

All the male sea lions, they have that band on their head.

And look at their sounds, now, he's not very loud, like ooh, ooh, ooh, like uh, uh, uh.

They are still learning.

When the real alpha male come, all the juveniles have to swim away, they have to be away of this place, because they other male, they can kill these juvenile sea lions, because they want to create the new generation of sea lions with them.

This is the first baby of the season.

(baby sea lion fussing) - [David] It looks like these white-tipped reef sharks have an ideal place in this old lava tube down here.

- If you like a look, this place is very peaceful, very quiet, it's like enclosed place.

This is the best place for resting, because no sea lions, no animals that will be bothering, and between those water channels there is a lot of strong currents passing that will help it to breathe.

Differently the other sharks, other sharks have to keep swimming, to rest, to sleep, or to stay like that.

These type of shark, they can be resting at the bottom, they can open their mouth to be pumping water, that's the way to breathe without movement.

- [David] How much will a big adult weigh?

- [Pablo] The adult, they can reach about 5' long, and he's weight can be 45 to 55 kgs.

- [David] So, well over 100 lbs.

- [Pablo] Over 100 lbs, this type of animal.

On average it's 45 to 50 years, this type of reef shark.

Other types of shark in the Galapagos Island, the lifespan can be 150 to 250 years old.

- Isabela Island, which is the largest island on the west side, it's the largest island in the Galapagos, is just pure volcanoes.

Volcano after volcano after volcano, and this is a good example, they call this the Black Hill, or Sierra Negra.

The flow that we see down here is ancient, it's 10 years old.

We can see where the lava came from far on the other side, and came down and filled this.

It looks like it's full now, but, very slowly, over the decades, the hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years, as the lava contracts, it will slowly pull away from the sides, and ultimately, collapse, and perhaps be 200 yards deeper than it is now.

- Galapagos the same like Hawaii, we got lava which is only 5, 6 million years old, Hawaii's about 10, 22, 23 million years old, but we have the same type of volcanoes.

During the volcanic activity, by the explosion, by the energy explosion, they made three big fissures in the volcano.

These fissures was about 10 to 20 meters wide.

All this lava was flowing into the volcano again.

We have a lot of energy accumulation underground, in the future is gonna be another volcanic activity on these volcano, the Sierra Negra.

This type of lava we call ah-ah-la, it's very dangerous for us, walking this type of lava.

Underground, we don't know, we have a compact lava rugs or we have gas accumulation.

When we walk on it we're too heavy, we can break the roof of the lava, and we can fall in part of the magma chamber in there.

- I can see below me the remnants of a small volcano that just blew its top, I don't know how recently, but it left this cavernous opening there, and it continued all the way down here, so we have a canyon that was formed by a massive explosion from gas, and it would've sent a big puff of ash and probably lava skyward.

- This beautiful place really will leave you breathless, because you can see the beginning of life.

You can come here a thousand times, and every time that you come it is different, and you really get a sense of how life begins.

(cheerful guitar music) - From Isabela it's a two hour speedboat ride to Santa Cruz Island and its 20,000 inhabitants.

The main place in the islands to purchase fish is on the port city's dock.

This is the seafood market in Puerto Ayora, the largest city in the Galapagos, and as many people come here, even more pelicans come to hang out, and a couple of sea lions come every day and they are well-known.

They get to participate in the market and they benefit by every little scrap of food that leaves.

The sea lions are just part of the scene here, everybody knows them, they even name them.

The butchers wash them off from time to time.

It's a Galapagos wildlife economic every day commerce scene.

And not anybody can come here and fish, it's only for locals, for a local market, and every day the residents, the restaurants, the hoteliers come here early in the morning to buy their fresh fish, and there's a good selection of it.

The highest point in the islands is just over a mile elevation, at the top of a volcano.

On the mainland, a flight of a couple of hours, volcanoes reach four times that height, even though we are are near the equator and only two hours from the capital city of Quito, the highlands are chilly and even snowy.

It's the spine of the world's longest mountain range, the Andes.

Yesterday morning I was looking out on a beach at the blue, Galapagos ocean, and today I am at 13,500 on the sides of one of the great volcanoes of the Andes, Cotopaxi, about the highest volcano in the world.

Ecuador owes an awful lot to volcanoes, as we all know.

- [Jascivan] Expectations is to be able to connect travelers from around the world and locals with the beauty of nature that Ecuador has to offer, in this case, high up in the Andes, at the Cotopaxi National Park.

There's so many haciendas right in Ecuador that comes from the Spanish conquering the Indians and they came with the horses, and all of these traditional haciendas across the Andes offer, nowadays, experiences with horses, right?

And we're gonna see some Inca ruins, we're gonna see this beautiful river called the Pita River, where we actually have a conservation project as well, downriver, that provides around 30% of the water for the City of Quito.

- [David] So, we're in Inca country.

- [Jascivan] We are, we are, and Chagra country as well now.

- Years ago, this was just one big hacienda.

This whole valley was a single cattle ranch, until about 70 years ago when it became part of Cotopaxi National Park.

The large haciendas were broken down into smaller units.

The cattle that ran on the haciendas at that time were wild and fierce.

Little by little the haciendas split into smaller units and now we have found it's more profitable to bring in tourists on horseback.

- The garb that the Chagras wear is perfect.

This is a traditional poncho, and it will shed rain, to some extent, at least, and the chaps do shed rain, they also keep you warm, but the stirrups more than anything keep your feet dry.

They're completely covered.

- This rocky landscape you're now seeing is the result of the hot blasts from the eruption of Cotopaxi in 1877.

The part that has green grass is the part it didn't reach.

You always feel it's a little risky, and sometimes uneasiness, because sooner or later, it may happen again.

- These big rocks were brought down from the high summit and then burped up at the glacier melted, and left all around.

One of the virtues of ecotourism is that you're forced out of vehicles, and you're forced out of luxury hotels to see what is really going on in the landscape.

So, you may be snorkeling, you may be SCUBA diving, you may be paddle boarding, you may be on foot, you may be on horseback, you may be on even a canoe in the rivers.

But, it takes you into the landscape itself, and that is how you become to understand what really is going on in nature and ultimately what's going on in the world.

Tell me what you're seeing when we ride out on this.

It's sort of a barren landscape except for the little green swathe down below.

- I see a enormous sponge, right?

I like to think of the paramo as a natural reservoir of water.

- [David] You called it a paramo, what's that?

- [Jascivan] Paramo is high Andean grassland, it's where not a lot of things grow.

- [David] Yeah, we're above the treeline.

- [Jascivan] Yes, we are completely above.

Everything above 3,800 meters in this country's protected.

The water comes from the highlands, right?

And I think that there's a lot to be learned about this whole process of what it comes from and the importance of glaciers shrinking, and erosion of the volcanoes and mountains where we're living.

So, we are committed to promote ecotourism in Cotopaxi especially because we want to transform the experiences that we do here into opportunity for people to understand better this not so known ecosystem.

- We have many water sources, from the melting of the ice of the Cotopaxi, and also from the paramo.

We have recently begun to preserve the paramo, trying not to burn the vegetation, and removing the cattle, so that they do not damage the aquifers.

Most of the water that drains from here becomes potable water for Quito.

So, the paramo is like a sponge, it allows to maintain water for our survival.

- [Jascivan] And, obviously, local guides like Rafael here, they're so important to look after our clients.

They are our ambassadors.

They are the responsible ones to inspire people to admire protected areas like these and the Galapagos and the Amazon, of course.

- [David] This kind of wildness is essential for the very survival of millions and millions of people, and it brings home the importance of maintaining worldwide these wild lands, not just for their beauty, not just for their diversity, but because the future of humanity really depends upon their being saved for the environmental services they provide for free.

- Over there is a (speaks foreign language), a hut.

It is a reconstruction of how the Inca houses used to be.

So, it is a reconstruction and also a part of the ruins on top of that hill.

Those are the ruins of Inca military barracks.

- That was an Inca site, (speaks foreign language), which is basically a military point, where you could usually be connected to other (speaks foreign language), for the North of the Andes, or down towards the Amazon.

So, it's basically a viewpoint where you could see the enemy coming by and let your partners know across the Andes that something's coming.

- Well, if you're gonna build a site like that you want it near water and a place where you can supply a crowd.

Those are canals here right at the National Park, high up in the Andes.

- [Jascivan] It is a source of water that will be collected on these big canals from the glaciers of Cotopaxi, and will go all the way down to small cities south of Quito that are major producers of vegetables, lots of cattle, so they need a lot of water to grow those lands.

- [David] Some Ecuadorans maintain that from the top of Cotopaxi, you can see all of Continental Ecuador.

But, not all of it.

900 miles west still lie the Galapagos, and a symbol of Ecuador's role as it emerges from the past into the international community of nations.

(mellow guitar music) - [Announcer] Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Agnese Haury.

Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was also provided by the Guilford Fund.

Copies of this and other episodes of In the Americas with David Yetman are available from The Southwest Center.

To order, call 1-800-937-8632.

Please mention the episode number and program title.

Please be sure to visit us at intheamericas.com or intheamericas.org.