March 1, 2012

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Took a long hike of several miles out to Tortugas Bay. We had been told this was a wonderful beach and a great snorkeling bay. The beach was pretty, but the bay was mirky and a bit stagnant. . .not worth the effort, for sure. Back to the hotel for a swim, then packed up and took the ferry back to San Cristobal and Sea Falke. All was well on Sea Falke. The solar panels and wind generator had produced enough power that the batteries were not overly low, though they were ready to be charged.

My description of the past two weeks in the Galapagos may seem as though this is not terribly different than a first world country. But while the people are very friendly, there is the bureaucratic side and the definite third world aspect to accomplishing ordinary tasks. In most places, when you arrive after a week long passage, you pull up to a fuel dock at which you fill up your tanks, then you also replenish your supply of fresh water from their hose. In the Galapagos, it works like this. You notify your agent how many gallons of fuel you need (even though you of course do not know exactly how much you need). He then goes to the port captain with your paperwork to “prove” that you are not a local resident and, therefore, not entitled to the local’s price. In this case, the locals pay $1.02 per gallon for diesel. We pay $5.35 plus $1.00 per gallon to the agent for getting the fuel to your boat. Once we have the port captain paperwork authorizing us to purchase fuel, we then take all of our 5 gallon jerry jugs from the boat to the dock. There we walk to the agent’s house where we pick up some 15 gallon jugs, then we take a taxi to the petrol station a couple miles outside of town. This station has military personnel with guns guarding against . . .what??? We don’t know and never found out. After careful inspection of paperwork, we proceed to fill our jugs with diesel. We then take the taxi back to the dock, load the jugs onto a water taxi (of course everyone needs to be paid for these services), off the water taxi and onto the boat. Then we have the fun task of transferring the diesel from the jugs into the fuel tank. And, finally, we have to take the dinghy or a water taxi back to shore with the agent’s jerry jugs and deliver them to his house. Now remember, we paid him $1.00 per gallon ostensibly for getting the fuel from the petrol station to our boat. He was present only for the purchase of the fuel. Since we are to be in the Galapagos for several weeks and since we must run the engine to charge the batteries every day or two, we will need to go through this process again to top off the tank before heading out on our 3,000 mile crossing to the Marquesas. And since there is no fuel dock for fueling, there is also no dock for picking up water. In fact, the public water is not fit for consumption, so we must go through the process of buying 5 gallon jugs of water at $.50 per gallon from a local vendor who brings them down to the dock whereupon we load them, ten at a time, into the dinghy, out to the boat, up onto the boat, drain them into the water tanks, then return the empty containers to the vendor at the dock. It is all very labor intensive, expensive and time consuming. There is a price to be paid for the joy of being here!

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