Last Day/Puerto Ayora

We awoke to beautiful dawn light illuminating the little town of Puerto Ayora, on the south end of Is. Santa Cruz. We said our farewells to the crew, and after a short panga ride to the dock, made our way through town to the Darwin Research Center. The center is concerned with keeping the varied species of land tortoises and iguanas from extinction; that's already happened on five of the archipelago's islands. You may have read about "Lonesome George", the last of his kind on one of the northern islands. Though he was brought to the Center and presented with a number of attractive female tortoises, he simply wasn't interested (the locals joke that he was gay. Or maybe it wasn't a joke). He died in 2012. One of the problems of attempting to interbreed animals from different islands is sterility in the offspring; even if the breeding "takes" with live young, the animals often die when they reach mating age, or they are unable to successfully reproduce. Though the islands don't seem that far apart physically, apparently the specialization that Charles Darwin noted has lasting effects.

A two-year old

The Darwin Center is a pleasant park that provides walkways threading through the grounds; we passed tortoises that were only a few inches in length to massive oldsters (they can live to be around 100 years). El Diablo, in spite of his unimpressive appearance, is the Center's champion. He mates with every female presented to him, usually successfully. What a guy!

El Diablo is very tired

We waited in town for a bus that took us through the lush, green highlands to the north part of the island; from there, a short ferry ride brought us back to Baltra and the airport. I met up once again with my Israeli friend, who stayed in Puerto Ayora the week--she had an adventure too, a mini-romance. It's a charming little town, and I could see coming directly here from Quito in the future. I suppose we both found what we were looking for.

Santa Cruz uplands

The flight back was uneventful, except for the risky choice of eating the salad served on the flight--by the time we touched down, I knew I had made a mistake. Fortunately, my armada of drugs including lomotil, tetracycline, pepto bismol tabs, and pro-biotics made for a short stint of bathroom sprints. What's traveling in South America without a little turista?

Once at the airport, I was unable to check into my next-day flights, so I took one of the airport cabs (these are marked on the side with a picture of an airplane) to my destination, the Galapagos Natural Life Hostel, which graciously gave me a free night for booking with Galapagos Last Minute. I expected it to be...a hostel. And it was. I didn't stay in the house proper, but in back, in one of the concrete block buildings that are single dwellings. Cold shower and TP-free toilet aside, it was a good overnight. I got to watch "Jennifer's Body", an old humor/horror/teenage angst DVD in English--what's not to like?

Painted on a Puerto Ayora wall...

At 4AM, my iPhone blasted out "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" as it had every morning (though usually it was at 6AM). I wandered out only to find no taxi waiting. Whoops. Again, I got lucky--the man who had booked my trip was staying at the hostel that night, visiting his mother; he woke up, turned the lights on, and called a taxi for me. Muchas Gracias again, Rodrigo! The cab driver had a religious program on the radio, and I listened to the silky voiced announcer expounding on "La luz marveloso" all the way to the airport. The "Migration" line was huge, and I was glad I gave it two hours. After one more luggage check, I took a seat in the waiting room; I was sweating it: only one flight a day from Quito to Houston, but I made it! In Houston, the thing I feared all along happened: I got bumped, and had to wait five hours for a plane to SFO. As is usual with anxiety, when the thing you fear most happens, you are relieved. I was pretty exhausted when we got into San Francisco (I had been either in an airport or some sort of moving vehicle for nearly 17 hours at that point), but the first of my adventures was a great success, and I felt elated. I even over-tipped the cab driver (I must have been tired).

Next: INDIA!

Galapagos Arrival

Thank COPU (that's Central Operating Principle of the Universe, for those in the know) for the kindness of strangers. First, I got the same cab driver as on the way in--a nice fellow, and above all, a helluva driver who got me to the airport on time in spite of morning traffic and lumbering buses that had all the speed of brontosauri at an herbal lunch counter. Then the fun really began...
 

Baltra airport

Ecuador has an elaborate system for just about everything, including getting foreigners from Quito to Baltra in the Galapagos, coupled with a near-total lack of information in English and among the airport personnel. I wandered around and around the small national airport, asking this person and that, getting different answers--often because of the language barrier and my nearly absent espanol. I ended up in the quite long TAME airline queue. Fortunately, a young man came to the line at the same time, and he spoke excellent English, thanks to six months in Chicago (I think every American that travels beyond US borders has thought, "why does everyone else in the world speak at least two languages except us?"). He went up to the front of the line with my info sheet and got the lowdown. I was to go to an unmarked door inside the terminal nearby. They then directed me to go outside. I immediately went to the wrong door, and was directed to another outside door. Finally, that was the right one! After that, back to inside door number 1, paid my $10, and was sent back to the TAME airline line, where my gallant young friend had held a place for me. Then he was delayed at the gate for some reason, a cell phone to his ear and a worried look on his face. I hope it turned out all right for him.

A sign at the Baltra airport

In the terminal, the flight was late, and TAME personnel kept disappearing. I ended up talking to an Israeli doctor, a woman who was also traveling alone, and together we managed to figure out which gate the flight was leaving from. She came enroute from Spain, couldn't land in Quito because of the torrential rains last night (the weather in Quito can manifest all four seasons in a day). Her flight ended up going to Quayaquil on the coast, enduring a six-hour layover, then flying into Quito; here she was, wandering around the same waiting room as me. The joys of travel; it's a way to test yourself, that's for sure.

Interesting note about the money: Ecuador uses American dollars as their currency; for change, they give you Sacajawea dollars, which I haven't seen in the US in years. They're highly valued here. Fun fact: Ecuador is named for the equator, which evenly divides the country and the city of Quito. 

The intense blue tint is from the blue shades on the dock

Reps from the yate Fragata picked us up at the airport in Baltra--I thought Baltra was a town, but it's a military installation. All together, we are three young couples, three older couples, a young single girl, and yours truly--an international assortment, from Holland, Switzerland, Canada, French Canada, and America. A jolting bus ride from the military installation brought us to the boat. Before we boarded, we got a taste of what the Galapagos is famous for--a sleeping marine iguana kept guard outside the boat launch and a sassy sea lion posed magnificently for pictures on a bench.

When I say the descriptive "first class", what comes to mind? Chilled cocktails on the foredeck? An abundance of hot water any time the urge strikes to shower? This is not Fragata, a slightly careworn boat whose last refitting was a decade past. Not that the crew doesn't try--they definitely make up for the faded brightwork. Yacht life isn't quite what I expected--for one thing, the simple act of taking a pee is not at all simple. No paper can enter the sewage that is flushed into the open sea in the Galapagos--that means, wipe (or more realistically, dab) and dispose of the paper in a container next to the toilet. Poop? We won't even go there. I'm sure I wasn't the only person who did a little toilet diving the first day…

The boat took us to Sombrero Chino, a small island south of Is. Santiago, where we went for our first snorkel--the water sparkled with schools of silvery anchovies, and the reefs were populated with all manner of colorful fish: pastel pink and yellow parrotfish, yellow-tailed wrasses, a cobalt blue sea star and much more (the Galapagos video is ready! Check it out:  vimeo.com/joanneorionmiller). It was an excellent dive followed by a short walk among a few sea lions with adorable pups. The sun disappeared into a neon sunset. A few of us gathered on the Fragata's sun deck to watch the last of the golden light darken to shades of gray-blue.