TheExpatJournals.com

So I just returned from the Galapagos and all my friends ask the same question, “How was it?”  That is not so easy to answer because I could probably spend the next two days talking about the experience.  It isn’t enough to merely say that everywhere else I’ve ever been now pales in comparison because you can’t compare the Galapagos with anywhere else.  It is literally another world. After awhile, I came up with one simple response, “It’s like the epitome of summer camp for adults located in the land that time forgot”.  Yes, I know it’s vague, but once you’ve been there yourself, it makes perfect sense.

My ‘camp counselors’ were the wonderful staff at the Red Mangrove Aventura Lodge in Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz who had arranged everything so I didn’t even have to think, merely enjoy!  Me on organized tours?  Whodda thunk the day would ever come?

So bear with me…this will have to be in a couple of installments:

Day 1:

I’ve flown over dark, gun metal gray seas and marine blue seas so dark they’re almost purple.  I’ve flown over shallow Caribbean seas so veined with coral and sandbars they seemed like a vast slab of aquatic marble.  But today was a sea I had never seen.  If baby blue were dark, that was the color from so high above.  Service was both friendly and excellent on Aerogal, superior to the other domestic Aerogal flights I’ve taken.  The food wasn’t even bad for airline food.  The Baltra airstrip lay in a desolate brown stretch so obviously strewn with cacti even from the sky, that the only surprise once on the ground was the heat.  Stretched beyond was the immensity of Santa Cruz Island with the sort of dizzying slope of land that  I’ve only seen extending down from volcanic cones, indeed visible as we taxied down the runway to the airport that was once a US naval base.  From there, it was only a 5 minute bus ride to the 5 minute water ferry across classic emerald green water to Santa Cruz.   Then a surprisingly long 45 minutes into Puerto Ayora passing through numerous climates with drastically different climates.

The Red Mangrove Aventura Lodge in Puerto Ayora is as enchanted as the islands themselves.  From the bright, hot light of the equatorial sun and the bustle of activity along the touristy, but charming, strip that is Charles Darwin Avenue in Puerto Ayora, suddenly you step inside a cool, shaded tunnel of wild red mangrove and stroll into another world.  The terracotta colored, soft adobe walls seem to rise organically from the mangrove forest.  The horizon is an emerald green bay dotted with blue and white boats with the shops, restaurants and other hotels of Puerto Ayora lining Academy Bay as a backdrop.  This shore has no beach, only broken, jet black volcanic rocks which add yet another contrast to this extraordinary palette of color.  That the Lodge is so close to both the Charles Darwin Station and the town of Puerto Ayora, yet is seemingly its own secluded little world right in the middle of it all is a very rare find anywhere in the world, but in Puerto Ayora, it is unique.

After getting checked in, I sat outside on the deck above the sea as frigates and pelicans soared overhead and then I saw it… so streamlined he almost seemed like a flying penguin and tucked tightly next to his body, those bright blue feet were unmistakable…my first Blue Footed Booby sighting!  Ever since I saw the first photo of one (just like with the marine iguanas which seem as smitten with the deck as I am), I had a strange, strong desire to see one in person.  As many of the unique animals found only in the Galapagos, they seem downright mythical and that makes the experience all the more magical.  That those particular two Galapagos creatures were there to welcome me in that idyllic setting was a very nice start indeed.

I went back up to my room to soak in even more of the view from my own private, shaded deck.  My room is called the “Verde Room”.  At Red Mangrove, the rooms don’t have numbers; they have names. I like that.  Whimsical, rustic elegance with a large, comfy bed covered in pure, crisp white linens and handmade white rugs dotting the green floors, not unlike the boats in the bay visible through the large windows.  Other hotels in Puerto Ayora seemed so sterile and common relative to the Red Mangrove, which is chocked full of personality and is as unique as the Galapagos themselves.  I mean, who wants to stay in an equivalent to the Days Inn in the Galapagos?

I can’t believe I’m actually sitting in the Galapagos.  Wish I could remember how very many years ago I decided I wanted to come here.  I believe it was after watching a National Geographic special and I believe it was first the whacky blue footed booby and reinforced by the primitive, unique marine iguana.  I saw lots of young marine iguanas today.  Up close and personal.  Saw them on the deck and in the water.  I also saw more blue footed boobies, frigates, sea lions, finches, loads of pelicans and other birds I did not recognize.  Ah yes, and a heron.  And that’s only in Puerto Ayora.

One of the many highlights of walking around town was watching pelicans, sea lions, frigates, blue footed boobies and herons vie for scraps as the local fisherman brought in their daily catch. The animals are oblivious to the gallery of photographers, all as thrilled as I am to snap away, sometimes from mere inches away.   A group of a dozen or more pelicans with one or two sea lions tucked in the fray, would sit there quivering and you couldn’t help but wonder if it was in anticipation.  A fisherman would toss a piece and they would swarm for the bounty.  At times, as they sat still and watching him intently, his arm would move in a motion that only made them think he was about to throw something at which point, in complete unison, their necks would move in that direction before realizing it was false hope.  One sea lion was standing between two fisherman rubbing their legs like a cat.  It didn’t seem to move him into any position of favor though.  A gray (blue?) heron with its fluffy feather neck stood above the crowd on the counter itself and at one point, figured out how to forage for himself without waiting for their mercy.  A lava heron was perched in a tree staring intently, motionlessly with his gold eyes.  Never did see him move.  At one point, the frigates swept in and between them all, it seemed like something Hitchcock should’ve used.

Dinner was pretty good sushi.  Bed was early as I was tired and still getting over the flu that had been so bad, I thought I might actually have to cancel my trip.

The next installments will be what my first ever organized tour experiences were like.  If you’ve waited this long to go on an organized tour, might as well be somewhere that is truly as unique as the Galapagos are.