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Sunday was the final day of our eight day tour of the Galapagos, and mostly all I can still stay is "wow." Seriously, wow. It's that or 'effing bloody marvelous', language allowed on account how freakin' awesome that was.
Did small blog write ups for most of the days, but they don't really do it justice. Nor do the innumerable pictures I took, which I haven't had a chance to upload yet, mostly. Seriously, I'm kind of stuck on where to start. There are some places in the world that are on the 'to see' lists of most travellers, stuff like the Pyramids of Giza, Macchu picchua, the Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China, etc.
A lot of these places are overhyped and overtouristed. The Great Wall of China I visited. The part we saw was a reconstruction, little of it is the original wall. It was rainy, crowded with tourists, graffitied, and thoroughly underwhelming.
There are the places that meet one's expectations. Somewhere like Angkor Wat, which was about how I expected, but still great.
Then there are places that all the superlatives, hype, and pretty pictures just don't prepare you. Places that take your expectations and let you hear a nice whistling sound as you go flying way the heck past them into the realm of 'I did this when I'm eighteen, how am I going to beat this level of awesome later in life?' Places you can only TRY to describe in run on sentences with weird mixed metaphors.
The Galapagos Islands falls neatly into the latter category. Seriously, every expectation? Boom, beat it. I expected to see a lot of animals, but wasn't prepared for the honestly jaw dropping way the skies above Genovesa filled with gracefully seabirds of five different species by the hundreds. I expected mostly barren islands, not the surprisingly lush greenery. I expected to climb a dormant volcano. I didn't realize it was the second largest crater in the world, nor could I have predicted the way the cloud cleared the minute we reached the viewing platform, only to roll in moments later as we prepared to leave, obscuring the view for the rest of the day.
I expected marine iguanas, but not to almost literally stumble over them while walking. I knew we would see tortoise in the breeding centre, and PERHAPS in the wild. I didn't expect to see fifteen wild ones on perhaps ahalf hour walk, or the number of different finches one might spot in the same length of time. I knew about the 'keep a 1 metre distance from the animals' rule, and how unshy the animals reportedly were. I wasn't prepared for how many times I would have to scramble backwards as a booby or frigate bird or iguana or sea lion would wander up. I didn't expect the unblinking staring contests I had ( and invariably lost) with boobies, iguanas, penguins, pelicans, hawks, frigate birds...
I expected snorkeling. I CERTAINLY couldn't have expected the feeling of floating weightlessly in cool waters, watching as eagle rays swam past, then the heart stopping moment when a hammerhead shark passes directly below, or a white tipped reef shark, or Galapagos reef shark, or to watch sea lions playfully chasing fish a few feet away. Nor did I expect the pacific green turtles that came almost within arms reach, only swimming away when they were startled by my clumsy attempts to back away from them.
I hoped to spot a penguin or two, not to snorkel past groups of half a dozen or more sitting on the rocks, nor to have then jump into the water and dart past in pursuit of the fish that had seemed interesting enough to have satisfied me moments earlier. I expected more lava fields and scrubby brush and cacti, less gliding in a dinghy through a green, green lagoon of mangrove trees and dozens of huge sea turtles, past pelicans harassing penguins and sea lions popping out when the rest just wasn't impressive enough.
Or the hawks that sat still as we walked directly by their branches, or the baby sea lions that tried to follow us, or the smell of rain in volcanic soil, the brightness of the stars, the nocturnal gulls that followed our boat by nightfall, ghostlike and beautiful, giving way to the frigate birds that followed us by day.
Or the quality of the food, and the knowledge of our guide, the casual friendliness of the crew. Or the shades and clarity of the water, the shifting tones in the soil and lava flows, the number of greens in the plants, and the colours of the fish. Honestly, just about anything I thought I expected, I was wrong, and I've never been so gloriously happy to admit to being so.
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Len
non-member comment
lucky you....
Seriously, though.....how do you really feel about the Galapagos?