The first rule of thumb when traveling in a foreign country is to always book the first night´s hotel in advance so you have a purpose for being there - finding your room. The second rule is to read the chapter on said foreign country in the FootPrint Guide my Auntie Gayle gave me at Christmas. And the third rule is to always have enough money for instances when, for example, one might need $100 cash to pay for the entrance fee to the Galapagos Islands at an airport with no ATMs. But all of the above requires some degree of planning, something after only two months I´m tired of doing.
So I just bought a ticket from Quito to the Galapagos Islands and decided to wing it when I got there, finally reading the aforementioned chapter on the islands in the airport and boarding the plane last after reading that all-important chapter on ATMs and national park entrance fees. I knew things were going to be all right when, after I´d settled into my seat, the flight attendant paged me and the pilot, a friend of my Uncle George, came out to greet me and make sure I had enough ice in my Sprite. Oh, j´adore Ecuador!
Showing up here on these remote isolas off the Pacific Coast of Ecuador was really half the battle. A single lady with fab knees, traveling alone, looking for a snorkle cruise at the last minute? Discount! Finding a place to stay on the main island while waiting for first-class boat to arrive? Discount! Arriving on board and getting my own cabin when everyone else on board had to share?
My id is on fire, people.
For seven days I cruised with a boat full of 30-somethings, Dutch, German, Brazillian, English and one other American ´performance artist´ named Trek Thunder Kelly. Perhaps you may remember him if you paid attention to the 2003 California gubernatorial race, in which a man spent $20,000 changing his wardrobe to a shade of deep blue ran on a platform of legalizing prostitution. Anyway, we ate a lot of overcooked tuna together and talked about his latest project - he´s in the first of a 3-year journey to write a book about loneliness, and has sworn off drinking, sex and communication with the outside world. I know where he is, and his mom doesn´t. He will spend the next year living in the American Southwest desert, staring at a rock and meditating. In two more years, he promised to add everyone as Facebook friends.
While Trek Thunder Kelly was weird, at least he had some sparkle. Eight of the 16 on board were lawyers. I have tried to think of a joke about this, and alas it just wasn´t all that funny. Correction: they weren´t terribly funny. However, I am accepting jokes about lawyers on a blue-footed booby-watching cruise, and promise to post them on the blog.
I realized I am not particularly a boat person. It´s all that rocking back and forth. And water. Water, water everywhere. Geez, everytime we had to get off the boat, we had to go on a littler one, in the water. And when we came back from the island tours... it all became so obvious. Even when we walked off the boat, we all swayed around like we were drunk in unison - it´s no wonder the animals of the Galapagos aren´t scared of human beings. We were all happy drunks, snapping photos like the ridiculous tourists we were, giggling at the baby sea lions and creeping around the lizards in a Kodak stupor.
The animals, for the most part, obliged, patiently waiting for the flash to come on or the focus to zoom like the little National Geographic covergirls they are. Huge turtles, fat albatrosses, seals, sea lions, iguanas, snakes... you want to pose with a pre-historic, jumbo-sized reptile on the brink of extinction for this year´s Christmas card cover? No problem. Just tilt your head to the left a bit more, by that yellow dragon, please.
We snorkled every day, in freezing cold water, swimming with giant sea turtles lunching on algae in seabeds full of aquamascenery. I just made that word up. Oh yeah, I saw a shark! We had dolphins following our boat, and stalked a humpback whale and her baby en route to the equator line, which was supposed to be a big deal, but it turns out it was just a bunch of 0s on the captain´s computer screen and more vomit-inducing sway action on a windy night. I was hoping for more drama on the boat, besides who had the best seasickness pills. Nobody had to walk the plank, and there weren´t any pirates. There was no mutiny on the bounty. We didn´t get swallowed by a whale.
I had wanted all of those things, but when you´re on a blue-footed boobie boat tour full of lawyers... yeah, still got nothing.
I had such a fun time, I decided to extend my stay in the Galapagos by a week, staying in the only real town here, Puerto Ayora. I feel like I live here now. I know the DJ at Bongo, the only dance club. Javier and I talk about the virtues of Pitbull and all he´s done for Latin hip hop. I make the hike to Tortuga Bay in the afternoons if it´s sunny, being careful not to step on all the lizards and iguanas soaking up the sun. In short, it´s a rough life. But as our nature guide on the boat told us, these Galapagos creatures live so long because they know how to conserve energy, only hunting or moving around when absolutely necessary.
I have embraced this theory of energy conservation and I feel all Darwinian and stuff about my survival. Which is why I eat homemade ice cream and fresh ceviche every day. I recommend you do the same. It does great things for your id.
