Overseen by a snowy white owl that roosts in a little hole in the wall, this dark dining room has an occult air. The experience is far removed from the "other" Galapagos seen from the cruise boats Up here the coast seems merely a hot, savage dream. Shrouded under the cooling highland mist, surrounded by the boulder-like tortoises and nodding green trees, we are a world away from the archipelago's characteristic scorched, uninhabitable landscape, a mythical topography that seems only defined by the sea that surrounds it. At one point our trek descends deep underground, into a 30-metre-long lava cave where Polo has arranged a roughly carved banqueting table and wooden chairs, tall candle sticks made out of cana gradua (a robust bamboo). "These islands attract the same kind of eccentric explorer as they did in Darwin's time," he says over a cup of handpicked lemongrass tea.
"I met a Japanese sailor who built a boat out of trash and sailed in it back to Japan. There's a plaque dedicated to him in Baltra harbour," he says. "But my favourite was a woman who sailed solo with her dog for so long that she used to ask me directions around town, and would make barking noises to show she'd understood."We spend the day far from this kind of madding crowd, trekking around the farm, following the tortoises' slow progress and spotting Darwin's finches flitting around the trees. There's nothing like a herd of grazing giant tortoise on your front porch to remind you that you're camping in one of the most unique places on earth. I only realise I've been sitting for over an hour watching their sluggish progress towards a brackish pond, when Polo comes to invite me up to the house for a breakfast.We eat scrambled eggs as he tells tales of his early life as a yachtsman. As the sun sets, we give up the search and retreat to the camp on a picture-perfect lip of land overlooking the coast. Outside simple tents pitched on raised platforms, we eat freshly barbecued langoustine and yellow-tail tuna.
Soon Polo and his artist girlfriend, Coque, retreat to their farmhouse for the night, leaving me swinging in a hammock.I am woken the following morning by the sound of heavy teak leaves falling from the trees above my tent. A trained naturalist guide, Polo takes us on a tour of his land, keeping his eyes peeled for one of the magnificent primordial creatures. Now I come up to the highlands for a taste of the simple Galapagos life."Half an hour later we are roaming around Polo's farm on the edge of the national park boundaries. Polo purchased this forgotten plot in1983 with the plan to conserve rather than farm it, home as it was to some 50 sub-species of giant tortoise. "People in Quito thought I'd gone mad when I first came here," says Polo, a fortysomething diplomat's son who dropped out of society life and a promising career as a pro-golfer, to come and live an idyllic shoeless existence in these remote islands. "When I arrived 20 years ago the place had one or two dirt roads and you could only communicate with the mainland by radio.