Galapagos Magic, Part Two
I’m leaving the Galapagos Islands in two days. I started packing yesterday, only to find that mold had colonized my big backpack, my hiking boots, my makeup bag, and every other cloth-based item in my possession that I hadn’t used daily. Each was covered in a thin layer of yellow-green fuzz, a result I perhaps should’ve foreseen when I stored them in the dark, humid corner of my air conditioner-less room during the peak month of the islands’ wet season. But nevertheless, it’s nothing a quick wash won’t fix and it is a good physical manifestation of just how long I’ve stayed here: long enough for the place itself to grow around my belongings.
As a hot-wash cycle beat the mold out of my possessions, I headed out in search of a secret hike that José had tipped me off about a few weeks ago. Legend had it that if you climbed down the lava rocks on the north side of Cerro Tijeretas and continued along the shore, you’d get to a white-sand beach brimming with sea turtles. Upon arriving at the site, I realized “legend” was a dramatic romanticization—a simple peek through the trees revealed a full Ministerio del Ambiente-sponsored trail sign that heralded the beginning of the hike, though one that was sun-bleached to the point where I had to squint to read the suggested journey time of one and a half hours.
I briefly took inventory of my preparedness: no sunscreen, 3/4 bottle of water, tired but miraculously not hungover from the night of caña and tequila that Maria, Maya, and I had indulged in the night before, phone, headphones, and a just-downloaded 200-song reggaeton playlist.
I thought about heading back, then reflected on the time that my entire family—the four of us in my immediate family plus at least 6 or 7 cousins and my aunt and uncle—did a hike over the Great Bear Dunes to Lake Michigan armed with only one bottle of water for 10+ people, no sunscreen, and no shoes (this last oversight being the most painful, as the sand was burning hot and we had to dart from shrub to shrub, sacrificing our soles in the stretches between scraggly shade). By the time we got to Lake Michigan, my cousins and I leapt in and gulped gallons of lake water (while probably pee-saturated at that particular spot, the water of the Great Lakes is potable—which makes the Flint water crisis particularly heartbreaking). Gulping from the Pacific Ocean wouldn’t be an option, but still, I felt confident I could make it.
I took my final steps through the mangrove-lined sandy path to the rhythm of Chyno Miranda’s “Tu Boquita,” appreciating the killer beat and noting the surprisingly consent-adjacent messaging. “Dame la oportunidad, que te quiero besar,” Miranda croons, asking for the opportunity to kiss the woman he’s singing about, a notable difference from other reggaeton songs that usually feature women living their lives (dancing, walking down the street, talking to their friends, whatever) in a way that attracts men, who then pursue the women with an expectation of first passive resistance that the men will then coerce / push into submission. I have many thoughts on gender norms and relationships in Latin America; more on them later. For now, the purpose of introducing “Tu Boquita” to this reminiscence is only to let you know that I walked onto this beach, hips a-swinging and singing out the chorus, sat down on a sandy lava rock to untie my shoes, and immediately saw a marine from the naval base on the other side of the island step out of the shadows, encumbered by a big pack but sans headphones. So he’d been treated to my subpar Spanish singing and ridiculously uncoordinated hike-dancing for at least the length of that song, perhaps longer. I swallowed embarrassment and went swimming.
Bodies of water are the best natural metaphor I’ve found for my life philosophy: they contain the fullness of life within themselves—they are a whole ecosystem, self-contained and beautiful—but they also give of themselves to support life and fulfillment in other ecosystems, whether literally (irrigation systems!) or more abstractly (think of all of the enjoyment that we as humans get from being on the water). That is the person that I want to be: multitude-containing, independent, generous, vital.
I air-dried, slipped on my sweaty and sandy clothes, hiked back, and immediately drank four glasses of water while explaining to Jaime and Maria that no, I really wasn’t hungry, and that they could split the pile of lukewarm spaghetti-tuna-mayonnaise mixture that Marisol had left out on a plate for me. (Not every meal is as good as octopus ceviche or tortillas de verde—delicious fried patties of green plantains and cheese and onions and pinta beans).
I’d stacked my second-to-last 24 hours with favorite activities—dancing with girlfriends and hiking in a tropical paradise—to give myself the best-possible Galapagos goodbye memories, but my final day on the island was even better than the day I’d planned. I spent my morning shift serving breakfast to a delightful tour group, including a father-son Irish duo who complained about their massive hangovers in an adorable Irish brogue and then tipped me for bringing them extra eggs, then doodling all over the plastic water containers that Marisol had rescued from the trash and that she and I had cut and painted to turn them into planters for the garden.
Marisol prepared one of my favorite lunches—arroz mariscos with fresh-made lemonade—and we all ate together and shared plans for me to come back to visit. Then I went to Punta Carola, basked in having the beach to myself in the middle of a sunny afternoon, and read until Maya came to join me for a sunset hike up to the lighthouse.
I’ve written before about how the few years’ difference in Maya’s and my age—19 and 24—diminishes the meaningful gap in our life experiences. And that’s true—one of our conversation topics that afternoon was her first college counseling session with her freshman adviser, scheduled as a Skype call later that evening—but that’s also me being needlessly closed-off. Perhaps it was the relative social isolation of the island, perhaps it was a good dose of personal growth and throwing-off of preconceived notions, but I realized on our hike back to the b&b that I’d come to throughly enjoy Maya’s energy, companionship, and conversation. Another moment of realizing that I do not, in fact, know everything, and that approaching new people with full open-mindedness is hard for me but so worth it.
When we got back, Marisol surprised me with a tres leches and peach cake that she’d made as a goodbye present. She sliced it, drowned each piece in extra condensed milk, and we all sat around the table again, eating and crying and sharing happy memories.
I settled in to work my evening shift at the reception desk, but after only a half hour (wherein my only work activity was selling a few beers to the probably alcoholic Irishmen), Maria pulled me off the desk and told me to get changed for my goodbye party. I hadn’t expected to have one, and rushed through a getting-ready process that consisted only of a quick body shower and a grab of a few newly-demolded pieces of clothing. Maria explained to our guests that we’d be closing a little early that night, as it was my last evening on the island, and all of them cheered for me as we dashed through the gates and across the street to her friend Genesis’s house.
Side note: in Spanish, Genesis is pronounced exactly like the fancy Cognac liquor Hennessy, and I thought she was named after it for the first three weeks of our acquaintanceship. I only learned otherwise when Maria sent me Genesis’s WhatsApp contact and I started at it, confused, for a good minute until I realized my mistake. Oh, the joys of pronunciation!
Miguel swung by to pick us up, and the four of us went on a lap through town to gather supplies for the night: a bottle of whiskey, a liter of Coke, a bag of chips, and a DVD of some Vin Diesel action movie—in case the night turned towards chill—picked up from the town’s little illegal-media-emporium shop, where bright-teal walls are covered in shelves of bootleg movies, including a back wall of pornographic films and a corner of children’s shows. I attempted to share some views on the validity of copyright law and the importance of supporting artists, but was quietly shushed, and stood at the door while Genesis and Miguel made their selection.
Then we were off to the Highlands, where Miguel’s family has a farm that was to serve as our gathering place, in San Cristóbal’s version of a taxi—the open bed of a Ford truck. We picked up Maria’s cousin along the way and waved to at least a dozen other people as we made our way up the hills, under impossibly bright stars, to Miguel’s, where we ambled down from the truck and paid $0.50 each to the driver.
Miguel mixed fresh honey into stiff pours of our cheap whiskey and we stood around his kitchen, stealing bites of the arroz con pollo his mom had left in a pan on the stove while giving toasts. He then started taking music requests, all of which he throughly ignored in favor of putting on his own deep house mix—he moonlights as a DJ for the 3 clubs on the island—that began to reverberate through the wooden floors of the house and make the collection of hats hung on the living room wall flutter like pegged butterflies. He cajoled me into going outside and inviting the two Norwegian girls camping on his family’s land—everything in the Galapagos is a hustle; why not rent out a square of earth to tourists at $5 a pop if they’re willing to pay it?—to our impromptu party. Before complying, I teased him about his shameless pursuit of foreign hookups. I’ve written briefly about the weird ecosystem of Galapagos men and their gravy train of visiting gringas and will have more to come on the topic, but the initial strong disgust I felt for Miguel and his aprovechando of the dynamic had faded into a palatable light disappointment, like the head-shaking feeling you might get seeing a dog lick itself in public.
Turns out the Norwegians weren’t interested in joining our party but were fine with our plans to blast music all night, so we continued doing just that, dancing around the living room to The Weeknd and laughing as Maya and I taught the Ecuadorians our American drinking games.
A bottle of whiskey and two bottles of caña—a delicious liquor made from fermented sugarcane—later, we were fully past the “chill movie night” vibe and decided to go home before it got too wild. We headed back into town to our respective homes, me accompanied by the nephew of my boss, who was staying at the b&b and had stopped by my party with the caña. He ended up being “another one of those” with regards to the pushy Latin men dynamic that I promise, promise, promise I will have a blog post up on in a few days (I know I say that often but this time I actually have it already fully outlined and a final interview lined up!); I won’t ruin the good-vibes recollection of my time in the Galapagos with delving into it here.
San Cristóbal is so small that you don’t need email alerts or traveler’s advice to figure out when to leave for your plane. You just listen and look for the plane descending on the single runaway at the north side of the island, then leave twenty minutes later. I watched José and Nelly do exactly that when they left for Guayaquil a few days prior. At the time, I was sweating with nerves for them—they were breaking all reasonable-travel rules! they were shoving canchalaguas into their carry-ons as if there weren’t regulations against the bringing of marine life off the island! they were giving themselves exactly 7 minutes to get through security!—but they ended up being just fine, so a few days later, when I made my exit from the island, I did the exact same thing. Right down to the canchalaguas—José’s brother in Guayaquil had asked me to bring him a bag of the little suckers.
We did about six rounds of goodbyes in the airport, each accompanied by several tears and photo sessions. Eventually I made it onto the plane, my plastic-bagged horde of chilled mollusks quietly thawing into a puddle on the empty seat next to me, and began to jot down some favorite memories and moments to share from my time in paradise.
I started this blog in the Galapagos, then picked it up in Guayaquil, where I spent two days exploring Ecuador’s second-biggest city, experiencing lurid disappointment in the non-Galapagoan Pacific-adjacent beaches Ecuador has to offer (we day-tripped up to Salinas and, while Nelly and José were beyond sweet, buying me coconuts and my first bowl of enbollacado, a classic coastal fish-and-onion stew, the cigarette-butt-studded grey sand and the constant bombardment by salesmen hawking everything from sunglasses to key racks to bootleg DVDs was entirely depressing), and enjoying quality time with my Ecuadorian family (including a truly wonderful FaceTime session between my family back in Michigan and my crew here). There wasn’t much time for writing, what with all the traditional soup I was eating and the cute dogs I was hanging out with; the same problem popped up when I went straight from Guayaquil to Baños, where Tracey met me and we filled our days with forest-exploring and chocolate-devouring and adventure-having. Then Diego met me in Quito and we spent an incredible four days together (say it with me now: more on that later, I promise), and now I’m here in Quito alone and finally settling down to finish this. Please forgive my tardiness.
When you see the Galapagos Islands on a map, they look like a friendly cluster of scattered rocks you could hop, skip, and jump your way around. In fact, they’re miles and miles apart, and boat trips from one of the four inhabited islands to another take minimum two hours.
Potentially three and a half, if, like mine on my first trip off of San Cristóbal to Santa Cruz to begin a few days of island-hopping adventure, your boat breaks down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 20 miles away from land.
I was wedged into the back corner seat of a 20-person lancha, a small motorboat used to ferry passengers around the islands, having put myself in the ideal position to see the maximum amount of passing scenery. It also meant I was in the perfect place to watch two of our three motors sputter out and to witness firsthand the expletive-filled frantic tinkering of our captain and his first mate.
Twenty minutes into the delay, during which the pasty German couple across from me grew ever-more agitated, we finally heard the sound we’d been waiting for: the stuttering staccato of the engines roaring back on. We completed the trip at a slower speed than before, and with the first mate glancing back obsessively at the oily tools that the he’d had left littered around my seat as if their presence was a talisman against future mechanical failures, but we made it.
I spent my few days on Santa Cruz and Isabela walking around open-mouthed and thinking about the insanely complicated system that is the natural world and the incredibly motivating fact of its continual forward progress. Nature keeps evolving every moment, always striving to be the best-adapted version of itself to achieve maximal success in whatever environment it’s in. Again, such an exciting metaphor for how to live, no?
The Galapagos Islands are a science nerd’s paradise. Because they’re so isolated from land (over 1,000km away from mainland Ecuador) and were formed from volcanic activity, they didn’t begin with the animal and plant species found in other parts of the world. The first species to populate the islands either made it there themselves—the leading arrival theory for sea lions (swam there), a few types of birds (flew there), and the first trees and grasses (either transmitted through bird droppings or floated there with flotsam)—or were brought there by the first groups of humans (pirates, explorers, clergymen, prisoners). These two different types of species adapted to the environment in different ways and, after hundreds and thousands of years, began to form a third type: endemic species, which is what had Darwin so fascinated.
Endemic species are species found only in particular areas, usually highly adapted to their environment. Darwin noted (I’m paraphrasing here) that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal if the islands simply had a big diversity of species populating them1. The thing that’s special about them, and that supports the theory of evolution, is that they seemingly have the same species—many islands have cacti, and finches, and giant tortoises—but that actually each island’s slight variations in climate, environment, food sources, and geography has allowed those different species to adapt and evolve in minute and important ways.
My favorite example: on islands where the climate is drier, like on Santa Cruz, tortoise species have evolved to favor those animals with more curved, open shells (called saddle-backed shells) that allowed freer range of motion of the tortoise’s neck, because that allowed them to reach more cactus pads, a relatively plentiful food source even in times of drought. On lusher islands, you only see normal-backed tortoises. SO cool.
I did most of my exploring and gawking on my own, and enjoyed the solitude, except for when I had stomach problems on Isabela (José had warned me not to drink any juice or eat any fresh fruit or vegetables on the island since they don’t have their own source of potable water, unlike San Cristóbal, and that many restaurants wouldn’t be careful about using sterilized or bottled water to prepare food, but I forgot and paid the price), hadn’t brought any of my medicine kit (WHAT is the point of having a medicine kit if you don’t actually bring it with you, you ask? none), and had no one to send to the pharmacy.
My hotel’s receptionist came through, though, and gave me enough over-the-counter meds to enjoy the tour I’d booked to snorkel and explore the lava tunnels, now nationally protected land that is an example of how the islands were first formed.
I was fully healed by the time I left Isabela to go back to Santa Cruz, though perhaps it would’ve been a more pleasant trip if I hadn’t been.
We’d lined up at the dock at 2 p.m. as instructed and were herded first onto a water taxi and then onto our boat. I’d bought my ticket from the captain himself not an hour prior, having learned that I could pay less than the government-stipulated $30 each way if I waited.
A half hour passed. The first mate had already passed out plastic bags (people often get seasick on the bumpy journey) to those who wanted them and checked the engines, and was pacing up and down the tiny aisle. I tapped him as he passed my seat (again, a corner in the back) and asked him why we hadn’t left yet. “We’re waiting for a passenger who is coming straight from the doctor,” he explained, and then said something in fast Spanish about a hospital transfer to some specialist on Santa Cruz.
Another twenty minutes later, a water taxi pulled up next to us and a tall, pale man whose neck-to-body ratio resembled that of the flamingos I’d spotted earlier that day climbed on board. He was accompanied by a woman in scrubs who the first mate clearly hadn’t accounted for—the boat only had one seat open.
The captain came down to greet the new passenger and, realizing our space crisis, huddled with the first mate. “Who didn’t take Diamox and didn’t need a plastic bag?” I heard him ask. The first mate pointed to me. (For all the recent food-related stomach issues I’d had, boats have never bothered me, perhaps due to a lifetime of summers spent on lakes around Michigan on all sorts of watercraft.)
The captain then asked me to ride up top with him and give my seat to the ailing German man. What could I say but yes? I followed his faded blue-and-white striped shirt up the slippery ladder bolted to the side of the boat and took my seat on the half-bench behind his instrument dash.
We started our descent out of Isabela with a surreal fog hanging over the aquamarine water.
That fog quickly turned to a nasty storm. I watched the rain spurt in from the open plastic flaps and splatter across my seat and got up to help the captain fight the zippered windows closed, balancing myself against the bucking of the boat by bracing one leg in a side lunge against his seat column. We stuffed rags under the imperfect beige seams and then I shuffled back to my bench and prayed for my stomach to behave and focused on trying to decipher the fast, crackling Spanish that was coming through over the radio.
But eventually we were through it, and other boats started to become visible again on the horizon, looking like bath toys revealed by a cooling steam. I unzipped my plastic window and watched the sunset recede behind it as we pulled into Santa Cruz, and decided to resolutely ignore the fact that I’d have to get on another two-hour journey the next morning and that my current drama-free boat-ride ratio was one out of three.
I made it back to Cristóbal, and enjoyed my last few days, as written about above. A few other favorite Galapagos moments that didn’t make it into this final recap but that I want to record:
- José and Jaime teaching themselves to use the washer/dryer (at 60 and 24 years old, respectively) for the first time through tutorial videos that Nelly made for them during the two week period she’d be away and unable to launder their soiled belongings for them (pause with me, breathe through this moment of stunned disbelief at the domestic helplessness that machismo imposes, and then laugh at the visual, since it really was entirely hilarious)
- Sitting around the kitchen table with José and Maria after we’d closed the reception desk, drinking vodka tonics and queueing up YouTube videos of Whitney Houston karaoke tracks to belt out and being grateful for the ubiquity of American pop culture that allows me to bond with anyone from anywhere over some part of my cultural upbringing
- The moment, after visiting one of the mercados in town and seeing green peppers going for the eyebrow-raising price of $4 a pop, where I finally understood why all of the Ecuadorians in the Galapagos Immigration Control line at the Guayaquil airport had suitcases overflowing with pale green heads of iceberg lettuce. The islands do overflow with a cornucopia of fruit—guyanas, bananas, lemons, tree tomatoes, plantains—but vegetables are few and far between. So is fast food, which explains the buckets of KFC tucked under arms and balancing atop luggage I also saw.
- Small-town wonder at running into Carlos, a friendly Ecuadorian I’d met on Santa Cruz, on my last night in San Cristóbal. We had spent a few hours together talking about travel and public education and memes; the combination of his demeanor and the Diesel purse he carried slung across one shoulder had given me the impression that he was gay, something he disavowed me of when I misinterpreted his invitation to go out for drinks. When I saw him in San Cristóbal, it wasn’t unbearably awkward, but it did make me look forward to no longer living in a tiny, tiny town on a series of tiny, tiny islands where anonymity is an entirely foreign concept.
- Heading to the single ATM in town to take out money and being shocked and impressed at everything that bank members could do through an ATM: pay their credit card bill, buy phone minutes, pay for utilities, change their PIN, or block a lost debit card, all through a super-simple user interface, and then wondering: why don’t we have this kind of end-user efficiency in the States? Is it because we don’t have the same level of centralized government control in these systems (communication, banking, utilities, etc.)? Do we get something in exchange for having to deal with a million different systems—lower costs, as a result of more competition?—or are we all just lost in the quagmire of too much choice and not enough vertical integration? Something for me to think about as I continue to explore and research the different political and economic structures of the places I’m visiting.
And that, my friends, is it. Sunset on a really wonderful month—probably the best month of my traveling time so far, perhaps even edging out my four weeks of deep obsession with Uruguay. Goodbye turtles, goodbye beaches, goodbye uninterrupted stretches of time thinking about the world and my place in it. (Hello, strong internet and lots of reflections to turn into blog posts to come.)