Advertisement
Published: February 21st 2007
Hi everyone at home or wherever you may be reading. A special hello to anyone reading this who was on board the Aneglique last week. Don´t forget to leave a message to say hi.
My original plan for this part of the trip had been to turn up in Ecuador and see if I could get a last minute deal to travel around the Galapagos Islands. Then I started reading Charles Darwin´s account of the voyage of the Beagle around South America in the 1830s. I felt suitably inspired and knew I would be gutted if there were no last minute deals so, after a few dodgy money transfers and phone calls from central America to Ecuador, I had booked a 7 day epic voyage around the islands.
The Galapagos Islands are located around 600 miles west of Ecuador. They are truly unique. There are 14 or so main islands and lots of other smaller islets. They have never been connected to the continent of America. This means that a lot of the wildlife found out there cannot be found anywhere else.
Shortly after landing in the islands, me and 15 others were meeting and greeting on board the Angelique, an old 2-mast sailing ship that is allegedly over 100 years old. The air conditioning system on board the ship could have been slightly older than that. I was shown to my cabin where I met my roommate for the next week, a Shakira lookalike whose only dream in life was to meet a Yorkshireman and tend to his every desire. Oh, wait a minute - that only happened in my head. Back on planet Earth, my roommate was a very jovial ginger bearded Canadian chap called Ralph. He turned out to be the perfect roomie. It also seemed like we were lucky with our cabin - we had a little air conditioning and no bugs in our bunks. We also comfortably won the largest beer tab award at the end of the week.
The days were spent exploring the islands. All the books tell you that you can get really close to the animals but nothing can prepare you for the reality. The birds (feathered - I don´t want any confusion here) simply don´t care how close you get as you check them out. Many of them are sitting on eggs and we were lucky enough to see several small chicks being cared for. I´d probably have thought they were really cute and furry if I was a girl. There were magnificent frigate birds, nazca boobies, blue footed boobies, red footed boobies, night vision gulls (they hunt in the dark and have a proper name but I have forgotten it), Darwin finches, Galapagos hawks and loads of others.
Several of the islands started life as volcanoes. We visited one island that had a lava field. It was like walking on tarmac that had melted in the heat many years ago. Looking around and seeing no-one but our tour group, it seemed as though I really had left planet Earth and was in some far away land. There were several opportunities for me to practise my new found snorkelling expertise. Again, all sorts of creatures were on display, including an area filled with sharks. I counted seven swimming with me at one point. I tried to hum the Jaws theme tune but remembered that humming doesn´t really work when you are wearing a snorkelling mask.
My favourite creature of the trip had to be Lonesome George. Poor George is a giant Galapagos tortoise - the last of his kind. He is into his 60s now and all attempts to get him to mate have failed. There is even a reward on offer for anyone with a successful idea. Poor George. He was a big old lad - those shells must be heavy to lumber about with. No wonder tortoises are so slow.
At night, the ship would set off for an overnight sail to the next island. After dinner, me and the other guests on board would retire to the deck. As we were out in the middle of the ocean, the stars were fantastic. We would just lie there and talk nonsense - I was good at that. We also came up with another movie plot so if you see an animated movie about the creatures on the Galapagos Islands getting ready for the Baby Boobie Ball, you know where you heard it first. Perry - have you started work on the claymation yet? Another Oscar could be on the cards there.
Finally, I must comment on what a great bunch of people were on board. They were from all different walks of life but we all got on really well. Thanks to our after-dinner talks, the phrase "touching cloth" is now making its way around North America after I was asked to explain some of the weird phrases used by the English. After the tiring days walking and swimming around, I was also able to explain the benefits of world class sitting to a new audience. There may have been bigger boats with fancy schmancy showers, more chairs and working air conditioning but I bet no-one had nicer people than on our boat and I bet no-one had as good a time as we did. Hope to see some of you in London one day.
Next time - there´s steaks, there´s beautiful women, they like football and rugby - why haven´t I been to Argentina before? Plus a bonus country!
Hope you are all well. Good luck on the PG Pub Crawl if you are going. I want to hear all the stories.
Joff
Advertisement
Tot: 0.092s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0651s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Matty H
non-member comment
I was going to say...
make sure you have some fray bentos meat products while in Argentina........... but I just checked and fray bentos is in Uruguay..........so that sucks, but, I'll still be looking forward to Che Joff's Motorcycle diaries