Galapagos Islands

Should she risk meeting me on the street where her uncle was killed? Not with the killer on the loose, Tony Cobos' niece decided. She didn't want to drive there alone and get spotted by one of the gangbangers. Most of her uncle's immediate family, the ones who witnessed the killing, have gone into hiding in fear for their lives. So we met a couple of blocks away. Cobos' niece got into my car, and we drove over together.

A volcano on the largest of the Galapagos Islands erupted for the third straight day, but experts said it didn't threaten villagers or the huge tortoises that gave the archipelago its name. Oscar Carvajal, chief technician for Galapagos National Park on Isabela island, said tortoises and iguanas were not at risk because the lava flowed down the northeast slopes of the Sierra Negra volcano, where there are no animals.

A volcano spewed ash and lava on Fernandina, one of the ecologically delicate Galapagos Islands, threatening vegetation and some animals, officials said. Washington Tapia, director of Galapagos National Park, said vegetation on uninhabited Fernandina would be burned and some iguanas would die. But he called it "a natural process" that was not cause for worry. Fernandina is the westernmost island in the Galapagos. The volcano has erupted at least 20 times since 1813.

A volcanic eruption about 100,000 years ago in the Galapagos Islands left its mark on giant tortoises that are still plodding the planet today, according to a report in the current issue of Science. The tortoises dwell on the island of Isabela in the Galapagos and live out their days in the shadow of Alcedo Volcano. Other distinct, giant tortoises live on Isabela's other four volcanoes. But something about the Alcedo tortoises is different, reported the authors, after analyzing tortoise DNA.

There are more than 50 Galapagos Islands, and of that territory 97% has been set aside as a wildlife refuge since 1959. The remaining 3% of that Ecuadorean archipelago is populated by people: about 20,000 of them, from poachers to scientists to hookers to hoteliers. It's the lives of those people that this book examines.

Visit the Galapagos Islands--Ecuador's legendary wildlife preserve--and the Spanish colonial capital of Quito on a low-cost tour that combines a three-night island cruise with a mainland hotel stay. Seven-day packages, from $999 per person, double occupancy, are available through Dec. 23. The Galapagos, 600 miles off Ecuador's coast, are considered a showcase of evolution in action.

"Evolution's Workshop" might well have been called "The Galapagos Islands in Fact and Fancy." In the often entertaining and illuminating contemporary fashion that examines a place, an idea or a cultural symbol by looking at people's perceptions of it, Edward J. Larson presents the Galapagos Islands both as they are and as they have been perceived.

The captain of a tanker that ran aground and dumped nearly 240,000 gallons of diesel fuel off the Galapagos Islands was sentenced Wednesday to 90 days in jail and stripped of his maritime license. Tarquino Arevalo, 58, will serve his sentence in a naval prison, according to a statement from naval authorities on San Cristobal Island, where the tanker Jessica still sits 1,500 feet offshore.

The captain of a crippled tanker that released about 185,000 gallons of fuel into the waters off the Galapagos Islands said he was to blame for grounding the vessel but not for "one drop" of spill. Capt. Tarquino Arevalo, 58, who apparently mistook a signal buoy for a lighthouse when the Jessica ran aground Jan. 16, is under arrest at a naval base here. Arevalo and the tanker's owners could face two to four years in prison if convicted of negligence or crimes against the environment.