Galápagonian Aquaphobian

Our first full day in the Galápagos started with what I thought would be an hour walk out to Turtle Bay. It was four hours before we stumbled back into town after an up and down hike to the beach and back. The trail was lined with huge cactus trees sprouting ears the size of large serving platters. Many had trunks thick like mature trees and were easily 20 feet tall.  The trail finally opened up to a wide and deserted beach where waves crashed incessantly, pulverizing the coral, shell and lava mix into sand.  We passed splinters of a boat hull that had washed ashore as we walked toward an inlet protected from the surf.  What I had thought to be black driftwood turned out to be dozens, perhaps hundreds of dark iguanas lounging in the sun. They were big, black and mean looking animals with backs lined with razor sharp fins.  We kept our distance.  Further on, the protected bay was inviting and calm. There were a few people snorkeling or competing with sea lions for spaces on the sandy beach to relax.  We did neither and took the long trail back to town.

We had been booked on the boat “Golondrina”, but received a last minute notice moving us to the “Fragata”. The email described the change as an upgrade. Our new quarters contain two bunk sized beds separated by a narrow floor space. We have two small windows high on the starboard wall, each perhaps the size of a loaf of bread.  There’s no looking out of them, but they do let some light into the cabin.  The bathroom has a slanted wall (it’s the hull of the boat) with a cracked mirror framed in a broken ship’s wheel and almost enough room to turn around to get into the shower.

Eight days is a long time to spend on such a small vessel in cramped quarters.  The Fragata is showing her age, but seems sturdy and takes the high waves without a lot of creaking or moaning.  But when the deisel fired up, I must admit my first thought was centered on the “African Queen”. Our below deck cabin is permanently damp.  The hot water comes and goes in the shower.  The sink has one knob that turns in one direction. Cold.

Our friendly captain is William, a hefty sailor who knows his way to the galley.  I did not expect a Gavin MacLeod character dressed in a spiffy white uniform with a cap and matching white shoes and my expectations were met.  He and all the crew wore t-shirts and shorts, save for one evening when they did indeed don dress whites for a welcome cocktail party.  The assistant cook, a short and plump little fellow, looked more than most the part of a pirate with sun bleached purple shorts, bare feet, a torn tee and faded blue bandana tied in the back to cover his head.

Susan and I are the only U.S. citizens onboard.  Our fellow passengers are a Danish man traveling alone; couples from New Zealand, Germany and Holland; and two trios of families; a couple from Mexico traveling with their fifteen year old daughter and a mother, grandmother and young boy from Costa Rica.  We all settled into things at the same pace and we’ve had plenty of laughs together about the plumbing and other amenities of the Fragata. English has been the language of choice for most conversations and I’m almost able to keep up, at least with the subject matter, when Spanish is spoken.  The crew is entirely Ecuadorian.  Perfect.

This eight day sea adventure has been a ton of fun that I would not trade for anything.  The islands are beyond striking and we are far outnumbered by animals of all sorts.  We’ve seen whales, sea lions, iguanas, black tipped sharks, white tipped sharks, assorted rays, exotic fish, a snake penguins, pelicans, herons, pink flamingos and Blue Footed Booby Birds just for starters. Apparently having adapted to gawking humans not bothering them, the animals are wary of us but not afraid. It is a bit unnerving at first to be able to get so close to them, but the sensation fades quickly.

I knew the eight days onboard would feature a lot of snorkeling and I had steeled myself to take it on, despite not being much of a water person.  In fact and now that I’m thinking about it, being underwater is one of the very few things in life I will admit that I truly detest.  I got a break the afternoon of the first day. We were each fitted for and suited up in wetsuits, snorkel goggles and giant flippers. We boarded rubber sided dinghies for a “wet landing” on a sandy beach for snorkeling off the coast.  Most of our landings are “wet”, in that the dinghy gets close to shore and we passengers jump off and fight the waves and surf to the beach.  Think “The Longest Day'' absent incoming mortars, with an “Airplane” twist.  I pretended to be one of the gang for our first landing and strolled casually away to enjoy the beach and admire the sea lions lounging around.  No one was the wiser who snorkeled and who did not.  Susan, who knows me like a book she’s read a hundred times, took one look at me standing alone on the white sand in my damp black wet suit and said, “I know this is hell for you.”  She nailed it.

Day two brought no such reprieve. Now we were setting out into cold dark water to snorkel by jumping off the dinghies into the frigid sea. I once again squirmed myself into the tight synthetic leotard that clinged to my shivering body like giant cold hand. We cast off from the Fragata. As the safety of our vessel faded from view below crests of waves, I felt as if I was on my way to the gallows.  Once stopped, the experienced snorkelers happily slipped on their fins and one by one merrily jumped into the black water that I knew was teaming with thousands of gilled beasts.  I could hear the exclamations of how cold the water was and my confidence waned with each “ooh”, “whew” and “wow, that’s cold!”  I slid off the damn boat.

I wanted to shoot out of the water like a Poseiden missile, but settled for instantly grasping and crawling my way back into the dry dingy. I had lasted twenty seconds, give or take a tick or a tock.  Any remnant of desire, as if there could be any, was completely extinguished when that evening our guide showed a video he had taken a few weeks past of a killer whale chasing a turtle near the dinghies. When the whale leaped one last time for the doomed turtle, it was plain as day that the whale was larger than the dinghy.  He followed this horror movie by explaining that tomorrow he would precede the snorkeling group with a flashlight which he claimed would ward off any sharks lurking in the water.  I firmly believe we are of the species homo sapien for good reason and not classified as homo insipiens aqua.

When not snorkeling - which apparently was scheduled by Dr. Pepper - we’ve enjoyed incredible hikes offshore.  The islands are loaded with animals of every sort. Huge turtles with giant domed backs block the trails in front of us. We walk around hundreds upon hundreds of monstrously large black, tan and murky green iguanas. They ignore us.  The sea lions lounge and roam around as they wish, one even jumping on our boat when we were preparing for a landing.  They play with the snorkelers, spinning around and through the groups of humans who pretend to belong in the water.

The Galápagos Islands have been an incredible and unforgettable experience. We got exactly what we came for and were tickled pink to have been so lucky in our lives to take this trip.

I’m not sure what we will cook up to top this one.

Whipped, Winded, Worn and Wowed in Peru

You’ll recall that we had discovered a means of converting US currency to Argentine pesos on the black market at twice the official rate.  Having a few hours to kill on our last day in Buenos Aires after packing and checking out of our hotel, we took a stroll taking us down a street we had skipped in order to give the road a chance for sights we might see.  The first sight Susan saw was a blouse adorning a storefront manikin.  She liked it a lot and since I did have one last $100 bill stashed away, she retrieved it and converted the greenback to pesos.  We returned to the store. Susan bought the blouse, the matching pants and belt on the manikin and the same pants and belt in different colors.  Coincidentally, the bill came to $101. We left Argentina with three dollars in currency to our name.

For our first day in Lima, we headed out for a walk, stopping by the Incan Market. The stalls were mostly closed and the open ones selling stuff we didn’t want anyway. We then made our way to the Huaca Pucllana Site Museum, a huge mound built around the year 600. At a little park near the museum a dead man was covered with a blue tarp. We were told he had taken his own life. The police and ambulance were there tending to the situation. Onlookers paused but did not linger. We had ice cream to wait out the clock for our escort and took an English speaking tour of the restored site. The guide’s static megaphone along with her face mask and accent made the narrative rather useless. But I was still fascinated with the accomplishments of people so long ago, equipped with few tools we would recognize, able to design and erect things that remain standing today. Until the excavations in 1980 or so, this was just a big hill in town used for dumping trash and motorcycle hill climbing.  Once again, I hold to my theory that anything is possible with enough time and forced labor.  As we left, the dead man was still slumped half off a park bench and half on the ground, draped with a blue plastic tarp flapping in the breeze.

We took an Uber to Parque del Amor. It was a sweet setting overlooking the Pacific and we enjoyed it as intended. There was some sort of public engagement taking place. Several girls were in colorful costumes primping themselves. Perhaps it is customary for women in Lima to initiate engagements in public and with pizzazz.  A pretty young girl had a banner printed with “Will you be my beloved?”, or something to that effect and had even hired a film crew to record the occasion. She too was dressed in native garb and danced an enticing little jig for the groom-to-be, presenting him a box of treats and delights.  He not only declined her invitation, but also rather demonstratively tossed the box of gifts to the ground. I thought it was a show, but Susan said it was the real thing based on conversation with those involved. She yelled out, "¡déjalo!“ (leave him!) to the weeping girl.  I figured it was a good day for the girl in that she was lucky not to have attached herself to such a creep.

Our flight to Cusco was a nail biter and one of those landings where the pilot had to bank so steeply just before lining up with the runway that all we could see was ground out the left and sky out the right.  Making things a bit more thrilling, we couldn’t even see the wingtips through the dense clouds until just before making that dive away from the mountain dead ahead and toward the airport.  I was keenly aware the pilot had the same view of nothing (una vista de nada) as I reflected on the many tales of planes lost in the Andes. These incredibly rugged mountains have no single crest, but are topped with sharp jagged edges like the teeth of an old two man tree saw.

The town of Cusco is an overgrown pueblo with plenty of colonial buildings, narrow streets and a thousand souvenir shops. We’ve had our obligatory coco tea claimed to prevent altitude sickness. We haven’t noticed anything beyond being a little winded and perhaps lightheaded off and on.  We took a mile or so jaunt to a supermarket outside the tourist area and were rewarded with storefronts selling cement mixers, tillers, tractor parts, tires, batteries and accessories. The exteriors of most of the common buildings have a quaint appearance of failing stucco that makes such places so charming to us.  It’s likely the owners and occupants are not so thrilled.

We were excited to take a pre-booked tour to see the sights of the Sacred Valley, but it was a bust. The driver drove like a maniac from site to site, the guide explained very little and rushed us at every stop. We spent more time in “seeing how the natives make jewelry and mine salt” stores (where they happen to sell jewelry and mined salt) than we did at the ruins.  The buffet luncheon was in a huge dining room that catered to tour buses - our least favorite setting.  I was glad when the day ended.  So much for not making our own arrangements on the fly.

On Sunday, We caught the first train to Aguas Calientes for a scenic ride down the Urubamba River gorge.  It was incredible.  We’ve been through Glenwood Canyon many times and this ride put that truly spectacular Colorado River run solidly in second place.  I had never seen mountains so high, so steep, so ragged and so rugged.  The river current was so strong that it seemed to keep up with our clickety clacking train car until we reached the end of the line.

While buying tickets, we hired a guide who looked the part and were rewarded with a private tour by an Incan man who claimed to be descended from the common people of Machu Picchu. His soft spoken English was passable and Spanish better. The gentle young man’s native tongue was Quechua. He taught us a few handy words that I forgot within minutes.  Our guide did a great job and the experience made up for yesterday by leaps and bounds.  Machu Picchu was everything it was advertised to be. The lost city is nestled high up and into the steepest and most striking mountains you can imagine. My first view came just as we crested a knoll and the scene really did take my breath away.  Here we were!

The Incas had no written language and no European visited this place until the 1800's - about 300 years after the city was abandoned.  There are no written records of Machu Picchu while it was inhabited. The names of the buildings, their supposed uses, and the  inhabitants are all the product of archeologists.  Everything we think we know about Machu Picchu is surmised.

So who am I to describe it?

We are working this morning on finding a ride back to Cusco so we can catch our flight to Ecuador.  It was one of things I did not arrange in advance.  We'll do it on the fly.