Off again

I’m off to Bruges with my parents for a few days now. I know, confusing. In the middle of all the Galapagos recapping I wander off to yet another country. While I’m gone though, you can all toddle over to Flickr once more. I’ve loaded the first half of the next set of Galapagos photos. It was evidently a picture-heavy day, as I’ve yet to load the photos from the afternoon – but it was Giant Tortoise Day, so what do you expect?

The tortoises, they were cool, man. Now click on the photo for the whole set, ’cause you’ve got a lot to get through and I’ll be back on Friday.
No slacking.

The one with half-naked men in the street

Our first stop on 8th June was the Interpretation Centre on San Cristobal. It’s an exhibition centre with displays about the history of the islands, along with information about the preservation of the natural landscape and its inhabitants. Enriqué told us that the centre hasn’t just been of use in educating tourists, the locals have learned a great deal from it too.

After wandering around the exhibits, I went outside to wait for Suzy to finish her wandering. On discovering just how goddamn hot it was outside, I quickly returned inside and plopped myself down on the floor. And took a photo of my feet. In case you hadn’t worked it out from the previous photo sets, I was documenting the various terrains I found myself on.

After the Interpretation Centre, we had about an hour and a half to wander about in the town and make a nuisance of ourselves. We bought a few bits and pieces in the touristy shops and I chuckled to myself at the sign outside one, advertising the fact that their ice cream was made from pasteurised milk. Have no fear, tourists. As we walked down the street, we saw children being led from a school, across the road, to a computer centre. When we walked past the school we exchanged wild waving and equally wild ‘hola’s with the children hanging off the play equipment in the playground.

We wandered around the town, being variously checked out by taxi drivers and builders and stuck our noses into the different shops. The Americanos in our party were leaving us at this point, to continue their travels on a different itinerary, so we said goodbye to them before wandering (we wandered a lot) back to be collected by the panga.

I took a few photos here and there of flowers, insects and pretty colours and as Suzy and I walked down the street towards the harbour, I was carrying my camera on my shoulder. Two guys in swimming trunks came towards us and the one in sunglasses called out, “Photo! Local people!” I obeyed the command and took a photo of them. We exchanged a few words about where we were from and then went our separate ways.

Down at the quay/harbour/place where the concrete stopped and the water began, we settled on a bench and enjoyed the gentle breeze. While we waited for the panga to come and pick us up we watched some local scuba divers fannying about on the steps. A sea lion kept making it clear that they were not welcome on her steps and when the divers’ boat turned up, a different sea lion received a swift local toe up the bum to get her off the step and out of the way. I imagine that kicking sea lions up the bum is a privilege reserved for the locals.

After a very garlicky (and therefore delicious) lunch on board Amigo, we headed to Kicker Rock. I sat in my usual spot on the floor of my cabin with the door open, catching up on diary writing and our friend Virgy came along to talk to us. This time we managed a conversation about my diary, my nice handwriting (though being on a boat does not allow for the finest of scripts), lunch and the fact that I work with computers.

Kicker Rock is, well, a very big rock in the middle of the ocean. It is tall and rocky. We sailed all the way around it, admiring its collection of frigate birds, sea lions, boobies, herons and guano.

Everyone remained standing around at the bow as we headed off towards Isla Lobos and Douglas (El capitán) invited me to take the helm. I asked my fellow travellers whether they all had travel insurance, but was already seated at the steering wheel before Tony could check the details of his, as he requested. I had no earthly notion of what I was doing and Douglas entertained himself repeatedly calling “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday Titanic!” into the radio.

Before too long I turned over command of the ship to Suzy, who stayed at the helm for a good long while … and steered us out into the ocean, causing Tony, who was still outside the bridge, to call out, “Err, left hand down a bit!”

Douglas and José talked to us and wanted to know if we had boyfriends (several, I just haven’t told them yet). A little later Suzy remarked that the landscape looked quite similar to that in Scotland and Douglas promptly decided that she was being romantic – the landscape was making her think of Nick … who was apparently most likely being unfaithful while Suzy was away.

Our next stop was Isla Lobos – Sea Lion Island. There were indeed a fair few of the furry lumps lying around, but we didn’t have to kick any out of our way in order to land. We had to follow a very strenuous, rocky path to another shore and as such, there aren’t many photos … just a couple to show the Oh my God, the rocks-ness of it all. A short reprieve of sandy path had to be diverted through a bit of shrubbery as a blue-footed booby had decided that the National Park-designated path would be just a super-duper place to have a nest. Dumbass bird.

Further on came the most difficult part of the whole holiday. I’m not even going to put the word ‘path’ in inverted commas to show my disdain. The word path doesn’t come into it. It was a long pile of fucking enormous rocks, which we had to scramble over. My one regret of the holiday is that I didn’t get a photograph of this to show you all what we were faced with. The trouble is, we were too busy trying to stay alive with all our bones intact to get our cameras out. Plus the fact that other members of our party were coming back past us while Suzy and I were still heading towards the shore, we just had to get on with it. We eventually reached the shore, looked around for a minute or so and then started on our way back over the rocks again, Enriqué practically skipping ahead of us in his flip-flops.

I think it’s indicative of how difficult this stretch was, that I haven’t found any photos of it by anyone else on the net either. The rocks were several feet in each dimension, piled high all higgledy-piggledy – and, if you were extra lucky, they’d rock about when you put your weight on them. Back on the boat later that day, as I tried to describe their size in my diary, I wrote, “like kidney stone pain, I can no longer fathom them.”

Sweaty and knackered we boarded the panga and were taken to a little bay of sea lions. Enriqué threw the end of a rope into the water for them to play with and they swam up and took hold of it in their mouths, chasing each other around.

Back on board Amigo, the snorkellers grabbed their stuff and headed back to the bay to play with the sea lions. Flicking quickly through the photos I’d taken earlier in the day, I went to show Suzy how well the shot of the the local totty had come out, but she was already down in the panga. So I showed the other women left on board, who all got very flustered and squawky, causing the men to gather around the camera too, to see what was going on.

When Suzy returned from her frivolities in the water, she told me about the fun she’d had with the sea lions. They certainly like to play with people, although one did try to throttle her, taking hold of the rope and then swimming around her!

Dinner was particularly yummy and I wolfed down all of the tortilla with tomato in double quick time. Then came vegetarian spagetti bolognese, which was also delicious, but more filling. Ricardo took the empty plates from Celestine, Stewart and Suzy, dumped them at the hatch and turned to come and fetch mine, only to see Suzy clearing it of what I’d left.

Clickety click on the handsome locals for the whole set.
(Ha! As if you’re going to care about pictures of rocks after this.)

Feeling useful

I went out earlier for a little evening wander and as I was walking back towards my abode, I heard a guy calling “Excuse me!” behind me. As is my wont, I ignored the first call on the assumption it wasn’t for me, turning only when he called again. A blonde man in his early 30s was coming towards me, asking to speak to me. He started excusing himself, hoping he wasn’t causing any trouble. I assured him he wasn’t, hoping to myself that, for his sake, he wasn’t going to ask for directions anywhere. I knew where my front door was from where I stood, but that was about it.

The man squatted down next to me and began to tell me that his friend had just had a baby. My bullshitometer kicked in rather über-energetically, as thought to myself, “Ha! I don’t believe a word of it! This is a scam! There’s no friend! I’m not giving you money! You can’t have my phone! I could poke you in the eye and just run!”. Fortunately unable to hear these thoughts, the man continued his sentence: his friend had just had a baby, who had been diagnosed with dwarfism. The parents were looking for a local support group and would it be alright if they spoke to me?

I replied that I’d be delighted to talk to them and gave him – yes, a total stranger – my name and telephone number. Aware that, on the whole, the notion of offering such information to strangers isn’t usually to be found in the “How to stay alive and not kidnapped in 2006″ handbook, I took a good look at the guy so I could tell the police what he looked like – you know, after the ransom had been paid and I was back where I belonged. He was a man, he had blonde hair and he was wearing a shirt. I think the film of my ordeal would be called “Sketch Artist III: Descriptions That Are Of No Use At All”.

The couple live in a nearby village and their baby is a girl. I’m really hoping they do call, as I’d love to pass on my wisdom. And we all know I have a lot of wisdom. Plus, from my own point of view, I’d love to see the little bubba and ooh and aah over her.

This is the one where a sea lion takes umbrage with me

The fourth day on the boat dawned and after breakfast, we headed to Gardner Bay on Hood Island. As usual, there were lots of sea lions waiting for us on the white sand beach. We walked the length of the beach, admiring the piles of marine iguanas strewn across the rocks. Mocking birds were running every which way, not afraid to come right up close to the visitors to their island.

Coming back down the beach, I took a photo of Suzy close to a group of sea lions. I went to give her my camera so that we could swap over, at which point I took a step too close for one sea lion’s liking. She got up and hauled herself towards me, having a bit of a grunt, but lay down again as soon as I took a step back. So, we found another group of sea lions for my picture.

While Suzy and a few others from our group went snorkelling I sat on the beach with the rest of the dry travellers and did a bit of diary catchup. I made myself comfortable on a big bit of driftwood as mocking birds danced about close by. A few feet in front of me, Suzanne sat with her husband Chuck as the mocking birds drank the fresh water she poured into her bottle lid for them.

I hadn’t been on board the boat very long on day one, before one of the crew saw me and asked what my name was. “Sarah,” I said. He told me he was José. A little later, we were officially welcomed aboard with a cocktail, introduced to the crew and then asked to introduce ourselves one by one. I, naturally, introduced myself to the group as “Sarah”. “Sarah” repeated the crew.

I think it may have been the next day that one of the crew, the chef, saw me on deck and said, “Ah, Sarita!” “Sarah,” I corrected him, wondering why people kept calling me that. There then followed what I took to be a pile of Spanish that I didn’t understand. I looked suitably blank, the Spanish was repeated, I looked blank again and said, “Sorry, I don’t understand.” I caught sight of José behind the bar nearby, looking amused. I discovered a little later that Mr Chef had simply been telling me his name: Virgy. I’m sorry, I don’t understand names.

As time went on, the crew kept calling me Sarita, but as our guide Enriqué only ever called me Sarah, I put it down to the boaty Ecuadorians simply not remembering my name … until, as he lifted me from the shore back into the panga on this fourth day, Enriqué called me Sarita having called me Sarah about 30 seconds before. This was now officially flummoxing.

After lunch on board, we set sail to Punta Suarez and while I idled in the cabin, Suzy wandered about, before being invited onto the bridge by José. There she took the helm for a while and talked to José about what she and I did at home. After José referred to me as Sarita once more, Suzy asked why I was being called that. Turns out that Sarita is the Spanish diminutive of Sarah. Suddenly it all made sense.

However, throughout my time on the boat, whenever I saw Antonio from the crew, he would greet me with a deep “Sariiiiiii”. I had no idea what this meant, but beaming wildly and saying “Hola!” seemed an appropriate response. It wasn’t until one of the last days of the holiday that he finally greeted me with “Sariiiiiii-taaaa”. Aha! Now I understood.

Suzy had enough Spanish that she would boldly throw herself into conversations with the crew. I had no Spanish to speak of and would thus simply call “Hola!” exuberantly and scurry away if Suzy was nowhere to be seen and a member of crew looked like they wanted to speak to me.

The sailors wanted to know what Suzy and I did back home and as Suzy explained with her limited vocabulary that I had my own company, with clients in Germany (she didn’t know how to say Austria in Spanish) and that she was also high up in a small company, selling jewelry all over the place, the Ecuadorians were forming the impression that the ladies in cabin 2 were multi-millionaire entrepreneurs. It took a few more stilted conversations, with much gesturing, a range of Spanish words from Suzy and a lot of fruitless searching in the phrasebook and slow simple English from me before the myth was dispelled. Meanwhile, Virgy was planning to come to England and get a job with me. We had many conversations with Virgy at our cabin door throughout the holiday and he would often appear to beg some of my after sun for his arms. He threatened to keep it as we could buy more for ourselves once we were back in England.

The landing at Punta Suarez was a dry one, among sea lions and marine iguanas. One sea lion did her best to get in our way, lying fatly on our path, but didn’t bat an eyelid as we all stepped carefully around her. As we came from the quay onto the beach, the galapagos hawk was waiting for us atop a monument and sat patiently as we all oohed and aahed and snapped away.

We set off along a very rocky path to see Nascar boobies and more mocking birds. We were tripping over lava lizards and marine iguanas the whole way. In one of the crazy “is this really real?” moments of the trip, we came across a few albatross. One pair were performing their courtship ritual, which consisted of wide open beaks and a lot of clacking their beaks together. As we all stood around photographing this fascinating and comical display, a lava lizard edged into the shot, occasionally being shooed away by an albatross before edging closer again to the feathered paramours.

Walking further on, we reached the top of a cliff from where we had a great view of the blowhole in the rock below. As the waves of the blue Pacific came crashing in, a big puff of spray would be forced out of this hole. Enrique offered to take a photo of me and Suzy as the blowhole did its thang in the background. Others then took their photos of each other, at which point the blowhole went on strike, barely blowing raspberries through the rocks.

The way back to the shore was exhausting, with sweat dripping everywhere. You’ll see a photo of the pile of rocks serving as a path in the photo set on Flickr. Difficult to walk over, but fortunately there was nothing much to look at around us, so we could concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other and not dying.

Once back at the quay we found that a fat sea lion was lying across the point where the panga needed to land. So once more we risked our ankles and made our way to the panga across the rocks you see below.

Later that day, we sailed to the island of San Cristobal, one of the few inhabited islands in the archipelago and finally docked in the dark. Sailing along the coast towards the port gave rise to the metaphor of the whole trip:

Sarah: “Look, there’s civilisation”
Suzy: “And we’re sailing right past”

It was wonderful to see the lights of civilisation again; I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed it. I could hear dogs barking and car alarms going off, music to my ears. I stood on the walkway outside our cabin in the dark and heard strains of the Spanish version of ABBA’s “Chiquitita” coming from one of the boats around us. I looked up and saw a big shooting star fly across the heavens above me.

Suzy and I sat in our cabin with our legs hanging out of the door and talked and looked at the photos we had taken. It was past 9.30pm and we weren’t ready for bed – very strange for us in this new life on the boat. The moon and stars in the sky were beautiful as the cloud cleared and we finally turned in for the night.

clickety click on the rockety rocks for the set

Picnic

We four girlies had arranged to have a picnic in Knole Park, in Sevenoaks. Perhaps with some deer racing afterwards. However, Mr Raincloud had other ideas, so instead we spread Lauren’s rug across Suzy’s sitting room floor and had our picnic there – with paper plates and plastic cups and cutlery.

We’d each brought a contribution to the feast: Suzy’s was bread, quiche and potatoes; mine was paté, a platter of cheeses and an avocado dip; Helen brought a variety of fruit, some cake bars and Coca Cola; Lauren brought salads, crisps and dips and fizzy wine in little bottles. 200cl being just enough to lower the inhibitions, but not quite enough to cause me to pass out on the floor. Incidentally, all that noise I was making from time to time? Nothing to do with the wine, I just do that sometimes. Suzy spent 12 days with me, she’ll tell you all about it.

Lauren and I also brought our cameras, so when Lauren finally pulls her finger out, she should have some picnic shots up on her brand new Flickr account. Meanwhile, you’ll just have to dribble over my photos. But before you do, give Lauren some trouble in the comments. She’ll love that.

Barrels and caves

Day 3 on the boat and we arrived at Post Office Bay on Floreana. The post office barrel here was used in ye olden days as a means of sending post around the world. Passing ships would leave their post and the sailors would have a rummage through the barrel, taking anything they could deliver themselves. Nowadays tourists continue the tradition, leaving their postcards and taking any that they can deliver once home again.

As you’ll see in the photos, people have also left more long-lasting evidence of their visits, in the form of decorated driftwood, signs and messages. Unfortunately, the one web address I found among all this no longer works – and using archive.org doesn’t reveal an email address either. It’s a shame really, because they visited on my birthday in 2003 and it would have been nice to say hi.

Post Office Bay was our first wet landing. Well, that’s not true. I’m special, so José carried me ashore while everyone else flopped out of the boat and got their feet wet. As the others were disembarking, a few penguins were swimming about in the water nearby.

We walked across a rocky, scrubby landscape until we reached a hole in the ground, which led to an underground lava tube. There were steep, rickety steps to descend and we were soon out of daylight and needing to use our torches. The trouble is, holding a torch requires a hand. A hand which would much rather have been concentrating on helping out its buddy as I scrambled about, practically on all fours, trying not to get stuck for all eternity in a hole in the southern hemisphere. Having defeated one part early on, where I thought I wouldn’t be able to go any further, I realised that I wasn’t going to emerge from this dark, slippy-slidey, rocky, gritty cave as anything other than sweaty and filthy, so I may as well just clamber in whatever inelegant way was necessary.

Our nimble-footed native, Enriqué was ahead of us and sat on a rock to wait for us to catch up. It was a brilliantly placed rock, as he was just within reach to give me a pull up a very scrambly slope.

The cave ended for us in sea water, just about discernible in our torchlight. We stood under the high ceiling of this lava cave and by the dim glow of our torches, Enriqué told us the story of the Baroness who came to Floreana with her three lovers. I’m not sure I followed it exactly, but it’s a story of intrigue, mysterious murders, disappearance and vegetarians being poisoned after they supposedly ate chicken.

After scrambling back out of the cave and determining in daylight that, yes, I was filthy and sweaty, we walked to the beach. Suzy had a bit of a swimming/snorkelling session, while I paddled about with sea lions not far away and little fishes at my toes. We stayed at this beach for a while before it was time to go back to the boat for lunch.

After lunch Suzy and some others went snorkelling at Devil’s Crown, a collection of particularly spiky-looking rocks. Later that afternoon we disembarked once more, this time at Punta Cormorant. It was another wet landing (but not for me!), so please enjoy Suzy’s expression as she realises she’s now got to put her sandals on her wet, sandy feet. Photo taken by the one with dry, unsandy feet. From the beach and its welcoming committee of lazy sea lions, we walked up a steep track through scrubby trees and plants until we suddenly came across a bay where flamingos were feeding. Enriqué was surprised at how many there were for us to see, so luck was evidently on our side there.

We kept walking, stopping at various points to admire and photograph the brilliant pink birds, until we reached a white sand beach on the other side of the island. Suddenly Enriqué spotted a baby turtle in the water and shouted. He started running down to the waves and we all followed, leaving tracks in the sand. “Oh,” said Enriqué on reaching the baby turtle, “It’s seaweed.”

Strolling about on the pretty beach, we read messages in the sand, saw turtle nests and ghost crab holes and photographed our long-legged shadows as the sun began to set. There was always time on this holiday, time to enjoy one’s surroundings, to have a rest and to store up some memories.

Back on the boat, we discovered that our bathroom light had blown. However, having been snorkelling twice that day, la Sooze was desperate for a shower. So we unscrewed the lenses of our two mini Maglites and propped them up in toilet rolls on a shelf so that she could shower by “candlelight”.

After dinner José told us that he’d seen our ~~ridiculous~~ ingenious setup and had replaced our bulb. The boat soon set sail for Hood Island, so back in our cabin bathroom I showered in good light, but in danger of concussion.

Clickety-click on the flaming flamingo for the set

A walk on the wild side

Darkness was falling, so I did what everyone should: I went for a walk. And since my legs were evidently going to behave and not give me immense pain, I walked further than I had planned, across a few fields and down a couple of dales.

I must say, for someone who was all by herself, I spent a lot of time laughing. First of all there were the ridiculous sheep. As I arrived in a field over a stile, two young sheep became separated from their parents as they stopped to stare, wide of eye and pooey of bottom, at the red-trousered apparition who stood before them. Their parents, on the other hand, remembered me from previous summers and kept walking.

Suddenly realising that there was now a real live human being between them and their parents, the young sheep set up bleating and baa-ing at an almost unfathomable volume. As I walked up the field, they followed me, bellowing with all their might. I wanted to share this ridiculous scene with someone and so called home. Engaged. So I called Sooze, at which point the two sheep finally plucked up the courage to gallop past me at high speed. Once reunited with their parents they fell silent – just as Suzy answered. Ah well.

A little further on my late night trek, I walked through a field of wheaty-barley-stuff (they really should label this stuff for the benefit of wandering bloggers). That was fine; it was only a couple of feet high and I could see the footpath no problem. Then came the field of fodder, which was four to five feet high and strewn in a tangled mess across the path.

I took the first picture with my mobile phone held at eye level. The second photo shows what I saw when I looked down. It was like fighting my way through a crazy thick jungle, as I could barely go a step without having to move aside collapsed branches of the crop. Lifting up the stuff on my left, lifting the stuff on my right, untangling the two and then trying not to be tripped by what was lying on the ground. It was under my feet, around my ankles, grabbing at my clothes and in my face. But most of all, it was very, very funny.