**This is an ongoing series recapping my last vacation. If it seems way too long and overly self-serving that's because it is. It's really a personal travel journal pretending to be a blog.**
Life on board the Galaxy yacht had a fairly consistent routine. Here is a sample itinerary:
6:45am--Wake up
7:00am--Breakfast
7:15am--Matus' first drink
8:00am--Landing
10:30am--Snorkeling
12:00pm--Lunch
12:15pm--Matus' 20th drink
2:30pm--Landing
4:00pm--Snorkeling
6:30pm--Briefing
7:00pm--Dinner
9:30pm--Matus passes out
Our second day brought us to Santa Fe Island, a small island with two endemic species, the Barrington land iguana and the Santa Fe rice rat. An endemic species is one that is not found anywhere else in the world. A pandemic species is only found on geographic panhandles. Hallucinogenic species are found only in your mind.
We anchored in Barrington Bay and took the dinghies to shore. This was a wet landing which meant we'd have to step into the water to exit the boat. Carlos deemed the water a bit too rough for Robert to exit safely so he told Maggie to take Robert and Janet to the other side of the bay where our hike was going to end and we'd meet them halfway on the trail. On shore, we saw some sea lions, a Galapagos hawk, land iguanas, and hiked among Giant Opuntia (prickly pear) cactus trees. When we ran into Maggie, Robert, and Janet, we told them they didn't miss much (purposefully leaving out the part where the hawk swooped down, picked up an adult sea lion and dropped it on top of a cactus tree where a land iguana climbed up and swallowed it whole. We were all so mesmerized that none of us remembered to get any pictures or video of the event. It really happened. Trust me).
The snorkeling in Barrington Bay was quite nice. We swam amongst enormous schools of dark blue fish and watched in awe-induced silence as pelicans and blue footed boobies dove gracefully into the sea in order to violently rip innocent fish out of the water and maniacally chomp them into bloody bits. I spotted a sea turtle and alerted everyone to its presence which gave me such pride and satisfaction that I decided to blog about it and award myself with a homemade "Certificate of Sea Turtle Spotting" which is proudly framed and hanging on my wall right now.
Back on board, we were informed that because we locked our cabin, it did not get cleaned like the other cabins did. We thought that was odd. Don't they have a key? Is locking your cabin door in the Galapagos the equivalent of hanging a "Do Not Disturb" sign on a hotel doorknob? Considering our travel experience up to that point, I don't think anyone would fault us for locking anything that had a lock. But, we acquiesced and left it unlocked for the rest of the trip expecting to come back at anytime to find our cabin door covered with mustard. There was a small safe for our valuables, but--wouldn't you know it?--we ending up barely hiding that key among all the scattered items of our room.
We found out later that it was the bartender, Marjorie, who cleaned the rooms everyday and made the beds. Perhaps her primary job of mixing spirits might explain why sometimes the bed sheets were tucked in a such a way that only someone with body designed by Salvador Dali could reasonably negotiate their way into them comfortably. However, she was very talented at making towel animals that sat on top of our beds and greeted us everyday after the morning excursion. She made swans, rays, finch beaks, shot glasses, bloody marys, and some hallucinogenic species.
At lunch, once again, everyone sat at the same tables with the same people. As everyone knows, once you sit in the same place twice then--BAM!--that's your seat for the rest of the trip. Others voiced the same concern and Carlos promised to solve the situation because he's a take charge guy! He was kind of like Scott Baio from Charles in Charge. But it was Carlos in Charge. And yes, Carlos was in charge of our wrongs and our rights.
We left Santa Fe Island and headed for the northern part of Santa Cruz island. On the way, we spotted some dolphins and also saw some rays jumping out of the water and flipping in the air. Whatever the Galapagos National Park Service spends to train the rays to do that is well worth it. We stopped somewhere on Santa Cruz to fuel up and get supplies; so I took the opportunity to explore the boat. What I found was not encouraging.
I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs of Galapagos National Park cruise policy, but I can assure you that the Galaxy was in violation of one very important rule. I searched through the bookcase in the lounge and did not find one copy of On the Origin of Species! That's like staying at a hotel in Vatican City and not finding a Bible in the drawer. Sure, they had a copy of Darwin's journal, The Voyage of the Beagle, but how could they not have his seminal work in their library?! I was mostly disappointed because I had planned on finally getting around to reading it during the down time on the cruise. Oh well. They did have a stack of books by a doctor that grabbed my attention. Those ended up being very informative, especially the one about a turtle named Yertle.
That afternoon we traveled to Caleta Tortuga Negra (Black Turtle Cove), a swamp of mangrove trees on the north shore of Santa Cruz. Not only did we pick up supplies and fuel from our previous stop, we also picked up another crew member. His name was Nixon and he was one of the two dinghy drivers along with a creepy (according to the ladies) guy named Angel who had been with us since day one. Nixon fancied himself a gondolier in Venice who only knows Spanish songs. Yeah. It was lovely. Lovely, that is, if you enjoy the desire to stab your ears with the barb of a stingray to lessen the pain.
Unfortunately, Dolphin Trainer™ and I got on the dinghy piloted by Nixon and led by naturalist guide-in-training Maggie. Now, Maggie was very nice. But as a guide she was...well...let's just say she's a very nice person. She's very introverted which isn't so good for a guide, and her English wasn't that great which isn't so good for a bilingual guide. So she didn't say much at all. But she did look at me a lot which, obviously, meant that she had the hots for me.
There are protected parts of Black Turtle Cove where motors are not allowed, so we paddled in those areas. Carlos' dinghy was leading and they went first into one section where we couldn't follow. All we saw were a bunch of flashes from digital cameras. I guess it was pretty spectacular, whatever they saw. Meanwhile, everyone on our boat sat quietly as Nixon's Galapagos Idol audition continued.
We did get to see rare green sea turtles mating. That was nice. I noticed Maggie give me a quick glance as we watched which confirmed what she was thinking about. I think Nixon and Angel were jealous of Maggie's crush on me and I could hear them talking trash in Spanish. I don't know what was said exactly, but I did hear the phrase "muy feo" (very ugly) thrown around. Maggie, however, defending me bravely with a retort of, "No feo!" I thought of jumping in to defend myself, but I doubt my high school Spanish arsenal of "¿Dónde está el baño?" would have done much good.
There were also black tipped reef sharks patrolling the cove. Carlos was sitting on the edge of the dinghy with his bare feet in the water and one of the sharks nudged against his toes. Carlos laughed and didn't move. He wasn't worried. Even the sharks knew who was in charge. That's right. Carlos in Charge, buddy!
Carlos even stuck to traditional sitcom format and solved the big problem of this episode during the final act. At dinner, he came up with a brilliant idea to number each seat and then had us draw numbers from a hat guaranteeing that we would all sit next to random people! Genius! He even cloned himself so he could sit at every table. Multiple genius!
That night on the sun deck, Dolphin Trainer™ and I hung out with the three girls for the first time and listened as they proclaimed their undying love for Carlos. Then they listened as Dolphin Trainer™ and I gushed about our man crush on him. We ended up playing card games with Kim and Sonia while Upasana drew "I love Carlos" hearts in her Britney Spears diary. Kim, by the way, must have been a Las Vegas dealer in a previous life because she knew more card game rules than that Hoyle guy.
As the Galaxy headed for the equator and our next destination, a sea lion hitched a ride with us by jumping onto the stern of the boat in order to avoid a circling shark. We named him Buddy Lembech. He fell asleep and was gone by morning so anyone can venture a guess as to the outcome. I'm an optimist so I'm going to guess a happy ending.
For the shark.
They need to eat, you know.
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