The object of her fascination: a month-old sea lion, mugging for the Winnipeg tourist and a clutch of fellow paparazzi with the poise of a Hollywood A-lister.
"I feel like a schoolgirl meeting a movie star," Newman says as the pup wriggles up to plant a bewhiskered kiss on her foot.
Then, a tap on Newman's shoulder breaks the spell. Marine biologist José Luis Benavides, the Galápagos National Park guide shepherding her ship-based tour group, repeats the park's often-violated "7-foot rule": Visitors who get any closer to the prolific and famously nonchalant wildlife that provided fodder for English scientist Charles Darwin's theory of evolution risk upsetting one of the most unusual, delicate ecosystems on Earth.
This year marks two centuries since Darwin's birth, 150 years since publication of his pivotal On the Origin of Species, 50 years since the creation of Galápagos National Park and Charles Darwin Foundation, and three decades since UNESCO named the archipelago its first World Heritage Site. But the landmark anniversaries are being greeted with a mixture of pride and dread in the 19 volcanic islands that straddle the equator about 600 miles off the Ecuadorian coast.
Though the global economic collapse has dampened foreign bookings and spurred more last-minute discounts in what has always been a pricey destination, tourism still rules the roost in "Darwin's lab." The number of annual visitors reached a record 173,000 last year, a fourfold increase over the past 20 years. Mainland Ecuadorians have arrived, too, boosting the resident population to nearly 30,000 from half that a decade ago.
And though 97% of the New England-sized island group remains under national park protection with small, guided tours limited to 60 designated sites, the Galápagos' growing popularity has been accompanied by escalating worries about its future. UNESCO placed the islands on its "in danger" list in 2007, the same year Ecuador's president signed a decree making their protection a national priority.
With oil revenue declining, Ecuador is even more eager to expand tourism, and "the Galápagos is the jewel in the crown," says Gabriel López, newly appointed director of the non-profit Charles Darwin Foundation based on Santa Cruz Island.
"But we have a narrow window of opportunity to set the Galápagos on a sustainable path," López adds. "There has to be a comprehensive master plan and a meaningful cap on tourist numbers."
Evolution of a tourist spot
When Darwin spent five weeks here in 1835 as part of a round-the-world mapping expedition, the 26-year-old naturalist wrote of being "astonished at the amount of creative force, if such an expression may be used, displayed on these small, barren, and rocky islands."
He discovered the flora and fauna that had survived their remote and desolate surroundings often changed dramatically to meet the demands of their environment. Hungry lizards learned to find and feed on seaweed beneath the sea. With no natural predators to worry about, cormorants lost their ability to fly.
And the Galápagos' 13 varieties of finches, which would play a lead role in Darwin's later theory of natural selection, adapted beaks shaped specifically for the food available to them: short and solid for cracking nuts and seeds on one island; long and pointed for dislodging fruits and flowers from cacti on another.
Dive shop owner Jack Nelson's father opened the Galápagos' first hotel on Santa Cruz Island in 1962. During those pioneer tourism years, most visitors were Darwinophiles willing to put up with heat, choppy inter-island passages and marginal services to marvel at what has been called the "Mona Lisa of biodiversity."
But nearly five decades later, says Nelson, 61, Galápagos travelers are "a coddled bunch who think they're adventuring because there's no Quickie Mart on the corner." Many view the islands as another checkmark on a global "bucket list" of must-sees, and are courted by an increasing variety of land-based special-interest tours from kayaking to sport fishing. (To environmentalists' relief, a proposed Galápagos skydiving operation never got off the ground.)
Problems beyond the park
Today, Darwin's former classroom has the deceptive facade of a "Potemkin village," Nelson says at his father's now-closed Hotel Galápagos, where bleached skulls of sperm and pilot whales still dangle from the lobby's corrugated metal ceiling.
"To a tourist, things look good. You still see a lot of animals, and not many other people," he says. "But get outside those controlled (national park) parameters, and you'll find a big mess nobody can figure out what to do about."
Many of those ills, from education and health care that are below mainland Ecuador standards to a shortage of potable water, sewage treatment and renewable energy sources, are chronicled in a fascinating interpretive center in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, the provincial capital on San Cristóbal Island.
Most of the sunburned tourists filing past the San Cristóbal museum displays won't be reminiscing about recycling programs or population pressures when they board their flights back to the mainland.
They'll recall the guttural chorus of sea lions staking turf on Gardner Beach, and the Darth Vader-like breathing of a giant tortoise, its shell the size of a dishwasher, as it lumbers through the misty highlands of Santa Cruz Island.
They'll think of the frigate birds zooming down to snatch a blue-footed booby's meal with the speed and intensity of a fighter jet, and the ethereal underwater ballet of a green sea turtle, seemingly unaware of its human admirers snorkeling a few feet above.
The Charles Darwin Foundation's López hopes they'll remember it all.
The island outpost that Darwin described as "inhospitable" has attracted more pilgrims than the father of evolution ever imagined. And, "despite all those pressures, it still remains fairly well-preserved," López says.
"But," he adds, "we need to treat the Galápagos Islands for what they are: a fragile archipelago, with real limits to growth."
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