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After saying a quick goodbye to my temporary home in Cuenca (without trying cuy, or guinea pig, since I had heard from too many people it was unimpressive, instead consuming tasty chicken vindaloo and shrimp balls on sugar cane with chili sauce), I hauled all my newly packed belongings and headed to the airport on a Tuesday morning. My flight to Guayaquil was quick and soon enough I was back in a cab headed to Hostal Suites Madrid, creating a strange looping symmetry to my initial Ecuador arrival. With a full day to kill before Galapagos, I wandered around the Malecon (main street on the waterfront) and some of the livelier streets, managing to sweat through my shirt in a record 12 minutes. When I stopped into a sandwich place for lunch, but more for the air conditioning, I was grateful for about 45 seconds, at which time the full blast AC makes you frigid. The waterfront of Guayaquil was fair, with large, clumsy nautical monuments next to a waterway flooded with patches of floating vegetation. I spent a few hours sitting on benches watching the people go by, ducking in and out of shady retreats. I preferred the leisurely coastal pace of the town to Quito's packed big city, but there didn't seem to be enough there to keep my sustained interest. To kill time I saw
SuckerPunch, which, well, don't bother. After chilling in the hostal for the evening, I grabbed a cab back to the airport the next morning and started out to Galapagos. When I tried to get my assigned seat, which was occupied, an old man shook his finger at me indicating that you just sit wherever is available. First time I've seen that, but ok. The flight was smooth and we time traveled back an hour for arrival. Fortunately, to jump way ahead, Galapagos has turned out to be the top highlight of the trip thus far, an incredible week of sailing, hiking, snorkeling and animal ogling. Here's the trip breakdown with a few sidebars.
Day 1: Calling Baltra Airport an airport is technically correct in that planes arrive there and police dogs sniff luggage for drugs. But the only structure is one small open air building with shade where you pass through the various customs requirements and pay your $100 cash entry fee. Tour guides wait just past the four foot wall holding up signs for the various booked boats. Once the dogs are finished with your luggage you find your tour guide and jump on a 10 minute shuttle bus, which leads to a three minute crossing of a canal on a ferry, and then an hour bus ride to the Southern tip of the Santa Cruz island, to the ultra-touristic beach town Puerta Ayora. Halfway to PA, we do stop at a property to walk through the woods and see giant land tortoises, some of which are so immense you mistake them at first sight for boulders. We also manage to hit a fly-by bird with the bus, continuing my trend of having an animal hit by a vehicle wherever I go to appreciate or help animals. Every shop in PA that doesn't offer beds or food has tourist paraphernalia stamped with Galapagos themed words and images, including the ultra-creative "I Love Boobies" t-shirts with two blue feet just to make sure you understand it's the bird that's being referenced. PA is actually a nice sleepy coastal town outside of the need to make all its money off of tourists. My tour group turns out to be a very fortunate size. Normally our boat, the MS Cachalote, holds a maximum of 16 passengers and has never had less than 10. For this week, we have six guests, which in terms of space, ease and solo cabin accommodations is absolutely perfect. Don and Sue are an excellent retired British couple with classic manners and wit, Tomas and Marie are the 40-something Swedish athletes (more on them in the sidebar) and Anna is the 29 year old German girl, arranger of classical music performances by trade, traveling through South America the past six months. The diminutive Juan Tapia (maybe 5ft 2in), an Ecuadorian naturalist freelancer guide married to a German and living in Puerta Ayora, is our leader. After a tasty lunch stop (blue fin tuna with broccoli soup) the group walks down to the Charles Darwin center, which essentially functions as an open air zoo. On the way, we see the fisherman cutting up the daily catches while groups of pelicans and one frisky sea lion hungrily await the possibility of scraps. The Darwin zoo is fine overall, but since the main aim of the trip is to see animals in their natural environment, the zoo setting feels paltry and disappointing. That is, except for the giant gay tortoise sex that occurs. In one pen, which we can walk through, only male tortoises are held and what occurs is, essentially, prison sex. We come upon one tortoise mounting another male, occasionally grunting and knocking shells in what sounds like a Frankenstein love fest. We're all fascinated enough to stay the five minutes it takes for the aggressor tortoise to, um, finish. It's the highlight of day one. Afterwards, we're free to wander and independently and I take the main drag back through town, ending up at the docks where I watch a large group of guys rotate into a volleyball game. Soon a police cruiser with sirens blaring goes by and everyone jumps up to see what's the ruckus. I join them and it turns out to be a shirtless man in handcuffs wailing. I wonder if he hurt someone or if he's just so drunk that's he's officially retarded. I'll never know. And that is a pain that will stay with me. But not really. Anyway, night is descending and our group meets at the dock, the bay alive with cruise ships and transport pangas (small motorboat or dingy) as everyone is starting their tour. We jump into a panga, motor out to our fine 97-foot clipper ship, board and do all the expected stuff - tour the ship, meet the crew, check out our cabins (they are tight - don't overpack) and have dinner (beef, potatoes, salad and strawberries with cream for desert). I spend the rest of the evening out on deck, marveling at the nighttime image of all these ships in the bay and the calm sway of the ocean. The Harry Potter movies in general don't capture the magic of the books, but the scene in the first movie where the first years are are boating it to Hogworths by lantern is done well and it's that kind of magic I feel in surveying the scene. Basically I'm a sucker for anything on a ship. Except prison sex.
Day 2: I forget my iPad isn't synched to local time and wake up at 5:30am, using the extra hour to ocean watch on deck. Breakfast is at 7am every day. The schedule is rigid but feels well planned and executed. During the night we've arrived at Sombrero Chino, or the Chinese Hat island, which feels vaguely racist. We panga out to the island and hike around (all the islands are on a volcanic hot spot, with many still active volcanoes, but the landscape of each and how the lava rock has formed is markedly different for each), getting to mingle with lazy sea lions, marine iguanas (who have to launch themselves into the rough sea to forage for food and then deal with the sea lions who like to grab hold of their tails for fun), lava lizards (tiny six inchers who are everywhere) and stunningly gorgeous crabs (some tiny and black, the larger ones red and orange with North Carolina powder blue underbellies). We watch the sea lions surf the waves into shore and end up going for a swim next to them. In the afternoon after lunch we hit another island, Rabida (full itinerary of islands in sidebar below) and kayak and snorkel, getting to check out the various brilliantly colored fish. I miss the white tip shark that was in the area. We then hike on the red tinged, iron-filled beach and see flamingoes (never knew they're pink due to the shrimp they consume), blue-footed boobies and lizards. Apparently one of the worst plagues on the islands in recent years was the goats that were introduced here and local officials have had to go around killing all the goats so the vegetation isn't decimated. Hardly natural selection, but so be it. Dinner is chicken, champagne, wine, salad, cake and tea and in the evening a see six foot shark passing the boat below the surface. On many of the nights, we were the only shipped docked at the particularly location and this inflates the magical quality of the trip without it seeming like a tourist amusement park. In the middle of the dark ocean, with the stars out at full blast, I can think of fewer sights that I've enjoyed more. Sitting on deck for hours just watching is an ease.
Sidebar 1: The Ballad of The Swedish Fish - Though I was extremely fortunate to have such a small amount of tourists booked on the Cachalote for this cruising week, I was just as unlucky that two of them happened to be Marie and Tomas, a mid-40s Swedish couple. Actually Tomas wasn't that bad - a bit clueless at times and his accent when speaking English was sometimes difficult to understand, but a decent enough guy overall. His nightmare of a wife though, who I'll refer to as the Swedish Fish in this blog (understand I've chosen a generic nickname for her, as no small amount of words could capture my disdain for this unlikeable beast, so substitute in your head whatever ugly description comes to mind). Both are obviously athletes in great shape - they're tall and very lean and I could picture both hiking through mountains with only a thimble of water and a tic tac for two days. Tomas's hairless, muscled, veiny legs did unfortunately make him look like an uncooked chicken. The Swedish Fish, with her tangled mop of ratty brown hair, knitted pink hat and obnoxious red paisley wrap worn everywhere, was ugly on the inside and out. Her mission seemed to be three-fold. 1. Tell others how to conduct their lives. 2. Monopolize Juan's (our guide) attention by asking every question that popped into our mind, even if asked before, also often while interrupting someone else. 3. Be a constant drag on the schedule of the day trips. Some highlights of the Swedish Fish: She cluelessly walked in front of at least 10 photos I was about to take, never seemingly aware of those around her. It was her birthday one night and Tomas had the chef make a cake for her. When they brought the chef out said he had made it special for her, she neglected to look at him, much less say "thank you." When 60-something retiree Brit Sue (who had been dealing with horrid stomach problems throughout her trip) decided to pass on kayaking, Swedish Fish gave her the third degree about it, offering trite reasoning that only works when talking to teenagers (such as "Have you tried it? You never know unless you try it."). Sue's husband Don, a splendid British chap, had lost his yellow ticket received when flying into Ecuador. Swedish Fish brilliantly harangued him about his searching ("Have you checked your luggage?) causing Don to snap back "Why, thank you Marie, I never would have thought of that." When I had a glass of red wine after dinner, Swedish Fish decided red wine doesn't taste good unless had with food. After two glasses I spent a two minute monologue on her explaining that her reasoning in almost any situation made no sense. I could easily have thrown her overboard. When my previously infected foot was looking a bit red again, Swedish Fish decided she was now a doctor and berated me early in the trip about seeing a doctor (we're in the middle of the ocean, mind you, and a doctor had seen the foot and given a clean bill of health 5 days prior). When I explained I was going to wait and see a doctor when the cruise ended in 5 days (wanting to go off on her intrusiveness but calculating that the tension and unpleasantness that might surround the interactions of the tourists in the following days wasn't worth it) she made it her business to go behind my back and run to the tour guide and say I must go to a hospital immediately. Of course she was wrong. Even while typing this my thoughts read like: %!&(MISSING)%!^(MISSING)$&^%!$(MISSING)@!$#! She compounded her behavior with being generally unpleasant, having to ask what every juice served was five times instead of just tasting it, demanding we go back on a hike to find her lost pink hat when it was actually rolled up in the scarf she wore and even causing nice guy Juan to snap a few times. Swedish Fish was the only negative on the trip...she did make me waste about two hours (fortunately on one of the less interesting hikes) mentally cursing her out and devising ways to push her overboard, but overall I got over it and she didn't come close to ruining anything. By the last day even her husband had joined our coalition against the Fish, saying he agreed with Don's joke about her and she dryly replied that he was just trying to make friends. I am only comforted to know that they return to Sweden and will live out their generally joyless existence far from me.
Day 3: Fortunately I have never suffered from any type of motion sickness. If I did, the morning breakfast would have been difficult as the ship swayed from side to side. On larger tilts, you had to guard against a glass or dish going off the table. This would turn out to be one of the less impressive mornings visually - I'll dispense with listing the similar animals we see each day, though always in different settings. The morning hike takes us to the Weeping Wall, since the island once was home to a penitentiary and prisoners were forced to carry large stones to construct this wall over two years...and then the prison was shut down and the wall ended up being for nothing. We also find a small water inlet and check out one of the huge magma tunnels where lava once traveled and burst through to the surface. My foot, previously infected, was looking red again (though no pain) and (skipping the long story, but see a brief bit in the Ballad of The Swedish Fish sidebar) I skipped swimming to have a doctor look at it. He had no idea, saying it could just be swelling, but gave me some more antibiotics anyway, also telling me to avoid salt water and alcohol. I'm in the middle of the ocean on a cruise ship. The hell with that. More on that later. The afternoon hike, the most grueling of the trip, takes us inland to see the second largest caldera on earth. It's well worth the hike, as the miles long caldera with the dried lava bed is extremely striking to see. We have wahoo fish for dinner and I spend the night thinking silly thoughts, including doping out how I don't understand the full appeal of bird watching (many have interesting characteristics, but in person you rarely get to see their most unique behaviors and thus BCB documentaries seem superior to actually going out to watch birds stand there or fly), and wondering how World War II is taught in schools in Germany. I think about how Thanksgiving in the US starts out as a sweet tale for kids about Indians and pilgrims coming together to share food and later on morphs into smallpox infected blankets and decimation. I never get around to asking Anna how it really is.
Sidebar 2: How I May Have Destroyed Galapagos - As long time blog readers now I had two separate nasty infections of my foot during my time in Ecuador. Who knows if some infection remains (the foot did grow more red for a few days during the trip)? On the second day, wearing sandals with sporting a kid's Japanese character bandaid over the foot wound, by the time we got back from the hike, I noticed the bandaid had gone missing, meaning it was laying there somewhere on the island. Maybe to be consumed by an unlucky iguana or rat. And I started a panicky daydream about how maybe the infection left traces on the bandaid, something that could be communicated to an unlucky animals who tried to eat said bandaid (if they were perhaps starving) and how that lizard, for example, could then die and its infected meat eaten by birds or other creatures and so on until the Japanese bandaid virus was suddenly racing through the islands, destroying creatures at an alarming rate. Lest you think the sea creatures were lucky, I also managed to lose two bandaids while snorkeling on other days, meaning a turtle or sea lion could now by the sea carriers of the bandaid bacteria. I pictured islands full of dying creatures, which also put an end to Galapagos tourism, wrecking havoc on the Ecuadorian economy. I really felt horrible about the whole thing. If I destroyed Galapagos, I sincerely apologize. By the way, in case I've committed some crime, this whole sidebar has been a work of fiction.
Day 4: On the next island spot (many locations are part of the largest island Isabella), we walk on flat beds of black lava rock (with typical simple Hawaiian names like "Aa"). We see giant sea turtles slowly swimming through inlets. They're the closest thing here to dinosaurs and are so massive in person. Juan breaks out a bandana map and a collection of toys representing all the animals, showing us they each came to be on the islands (floating on vegetation, sea currents, etc). I take out the Travel Guy action figure, which is amazingly close to Juan's appearance, and situate him on the map. Juan is quite taken with Travel Guy. As I've said, I'm not going to be stopped by my stupid red foot, but I do want to take precautions, so I try a ridiculous plan and take a blue plastic bag from the ship and some tape and wrap it all along my leg before snorkeling. It's pretty comical. Of course the bag fills with water and eventually breaks. But I do get to swim with a turtle! It's one of the holy shit moments of the trip, suddenly finding the turtle below the surface and gliding behind him, just a few feet away. It feels unreal and I now want every day to be like this. During siesta time I lounge on deck, reading Kurt Vonnegut's
Galapagos novel which is a nice counter balance to the trip. Spoiler: The human race a million years from now ends up with smaller brains and flippers, essentially devolved to sea lion-like creatures that no longer over-populate and destroy the earth. A good ending for our species I think. A large pelican with bugs running over his head is catching a ride on our ship. The Roots, Andrew Bird, Rolling Stones and the Dark Was the Night compilation play on the iPod. In the afternoon we take a panga ride through a mangrove tree inlet, checking out the turtles, penguins and rays.
Day 5: In the morning on the way to a new island we see 10 to 12 dolphins out fishing and give chase, suddenly throwing on our snorkeling gear in an effort to swim with them. We chase for a while and jump in but they're too fast and gone like an eye blink. Still, good random excitement. On the island orgies (that is the term) of three to four foot land iguanas languish on the shore, skin peeling and almost black from the sun. We see large orange land iguanas trying to get their romance on, but they're distracted by the tourists. Isn't that always the way? During snorkeling (nothing new to speak of) I grab the metal ladder on the panga to catch a ride and end up mooning the fish below me. Today I'm trying a tapped up Ziploc bag but that goes no better than the larger blue bag. For the afternoon snorkel, in a half moon cove known as a pirate's haven, I get to follow five or six turtles, have a sea lion zip past me and get to see penguins shoot through the water beneath the surface. Huge red star fish litter the underwater crags. The following hike takes us to Darwin's Lake (nothing special) and up to a volcano crater for a kick-ass view. That night, the ship alone in the dark of the pirate's cove (graffiti on the rocks dates back to early 1800s), it's the dance of the sea turtles. Though there are probably repeats, we see 40 to 50 behemoths slowly cruising the boat in a slow motion choreography, with a few sea lions chasing fish. It's another holy shit moment.
Sidebar 3: My Keys to a Quality Galapagos Trip
1. Don't go cheap if possible. First Class or Tourist Superior is the way to go. Being on a small boat with strangers for a week means the little things (good facilities, guide, crew, food, etc) matter.
2. Get a clipper ship, not huge modern boat. There's nothing overly romantic about a huge ocean liner.
Luck into a solo cabin if solo but better yet don't go solo.
3. Avoid any Swedish Fish as a fellow tourist.
4. One week minimum - four and five day cruises are too short to see very much and the first and last days aren't as involved as the middle days.
5. Snorkel everywhere.
6. Bring all the batteries and sunblock you will need.
7. Go with a small number of fellow cruisers if possible. 12 maximum if possible. You want to sit on the deck chairs without waiting in a queue. Plus, any boat that was unloading more than 12 looked like an unpleasant amusement park line.
8. Get a crew that turns your towels into sea creatures daily. It's dorky but a funny little touch.
9. Research the islands and know what you're likely to see on each one before committing to an itinerary.
10. Don't try and take even a small shell off the island. Juan told me horror stories of the airport security finding your confiscated goods, though I still fail to see how they'd find small mementos.
11. Get a good naturalist guide, preferably Juan Tapia. Guides can tired and agitated like anyway and having a fresh one that's enthusiastic and knows his or her stuff will make a world of difference.
Day 6: Fernandina is probably my favorite island and the piles of marine iguanas laying all over each other is pretty cool. This congregation of sun worshipers blends so well with the rocks that you don't realize 40 of them are in front of you until you practically walk over them. During the snorkel, a playful sea lion zips by me a few times, curious about the new guy in his ocean. I now have worked out the tape over an ace bandage and it protects the foot well enough. The afternoon hike is up to a collapsed caldera and we get to see seals to go with the sea lions. Snorkel highlights include a giant ray twice the size of me and a fleet of medium sized golden rays in acute triangle formation. That night we cross the equator twice, which is apparently cause for celebration, and we're invited up the steering deck by the captain to sing songs and toast the occasion. I realize I don't know any American songs and British Don saves my bacon by starting up "John Brown's Body." Juan proves himself a multi-talented man by whipping out the guitar and singing tourist-friendly tunes. It's the way he won his wife. Later, alone on deck, I dance a little to Bowie's "John, I'm Only Dancing" - this is a very good life.
Sidebar 4: Weird Animal Facts
1. Blue footed boobies lift their feet and look at the sky to entice a mate. When they have kids, if multiple eggs hatch, the oldest kid kicks the other young ones out, the mother ignores the ones kicked out and they die. Survival of the fittest indeed.
2. Male Frigate birds puff out the red sack on their necks to a huge red balloon which covers their whole chest and they have a head shaking dance to attract mates.
3. Land tortoises have two penises, one very small. Even Juan didn't seem to know why.
4. The Flightless Cormorant is the only bird that can't fly. It has to swim to fish for it's food. Is that evolutionarily helpful?
5. Tortoises (land with feet, turtles are in the ocean with flippers) can live between 200 and 300 years. Why? They also can go a year without food or water. I could use that.
6. Marine Iguanas are able to blow the salt they ingest from hunting in the sea out of their nose. This would have helped me at times during snorkeling.
7. Male lava lizards, when they have sex or fight arrival, often eat the tail of their partner/opponent. The tails grow back in about five weeks but when we see a tailless lizard, we refer to them as losers.
Day 7: We encounter our first tourism wave, with other boats of sweaty Americans and Japanese and non-identifiable Europeans also docking. Definitely a downer. But I do get to see a large shark swim below me, so that makes up for it. In the afternoon we climb stairs for (yet another) great view and the five hawks that populate that stretch continually come down to pose for pictures, allowing us within a few feet. There's more ocean watching, star gazing and such that evening, mostly to Johnny Cash tunes. Knowing that he belongs here, I give Travel Guy to Juan as a gift, happy that future tour groups will get to see this mini-Juan during his toy demonstrations of animal migrations. The entire crew has a celebratory drink with us on our last night together. I also sort through Anna's amazing photos of our South American travel, making me insanely jealous of her trip. Mine has been great, but I'm feverish for more.
Sidebar 5: Trip Tidbits
1. MS Cachalote: 97 foot clipper ship (way better than some 100 guest holding behemoth ocean liner, though admittedly with a full tourist crew, it would have been more cramped)
2. 354 nautical miles travelled
3. We passed the equator twice in one night and got a dorky certificate to prove it
4. Aside from three main meals a day (always three to five parts per meal, lunch and dinner with desert and enough for second or third helpings) whenever we returned from a hike or snorkel, juice and snacks would be set out. How do I get this done for me in my real life?
5. At one point Swedish Fish asks me if people from Connecticut have Irish accents, apparently detecting that in me. Maybe the funniest question ever. Still, I have a bad habit of mimicking accents and I did spend two weeks with an Irish guy at Merazonia. I wonder if there was Irish leftover. I did notice I started incorporating British phrasing and comical timing into my speech whenever I talked with Don and Sue. This could continue to grow into a troublesome habit.
6. The crew was eight large, including the thick muscled and bald capitano who did a nice job on maracas during the singing, seemed to really enjoy doing handstands in the ocean and generally had one of those faces that makes him seem like an immediately likable giant. Richard, the waiter/bartender/cabin cleaner, on the other hand, though good with his duties, had one of those faces that makes him look like the minor villain in a comedy....the slightly assholish head waiter that keeps the hero busboy running through hoops. It looked painful and natural when he tried to force a pleasant smile. Again, he was fine with his duties though. Those eyebrows aren't his fault. Personally I want to be the guy whose job is just to drive the panga (dingy, motorboat).
7. Island Itinerary
Day 1: Santiago - Baltra - Puerta Ayora
Day 2: Sombrero Chino - Rabida
Day 3: Isabella, Bahia Villamil (w/Volcan Sierra Negra)
Day 4: Isabella, Punta Moreno, Bahia Elizabeth
Day 5: Isabella, Urbina Bay, Tagus Cove
Day 6: Fernandina, Punta Espinosa - Isabella, Punta Vicente Roca
Day 7: Santiago, Puerto Egas - Bartolome
Day 8: North Seymour - Baltra
Day 8: We do an early 6am island hike, getting to see the male Frigate birds puff out their red chests to attracts mates and then head back to the boat for breakfast. We arrive at the airport around 9am and I say my goodbyes to everyone as I loop around again, taking the same shuttle bus, ferry and transport back to Puerta Ayora, where I'm spending my last three days in Ecuador. Aside from some gastrointestinal unpleasantness at times, this is a nice easy coda to the Galapagos and Ecuador experience...a few chill days in a beach town. The heat is rough and makes one lazy but there's nothing significant to do so it's not a big problem. We'll see how I feel about the heat without AC once I get to Belize on Sunday. In the meantime, let's hope there are no news items about infected Japanese bandaids.
Next: Belize!
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Cassie
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You Sound Very Happy
I hate you, not really, but I have to say there was a chipper tone to this entry. You sounded downright giddy. Enjoy the last of your adventure in Belize - but beware of El Duendo.