We had a number of things go wrong on our boat and with the crew. We think that the boat had been having problems over the course of the previous weeks and the crew seemed a little bit shell shocked. I think they had gotten some harsh comments from the group of passengers before us. We were never introduced to any of them and we had very little contact with them the entire time. I think they were good enough guys, but they wouldn't talk to us or even look at us a lot of the time. Our 'captain' was a solid, first rate douchebag...no doubt about that. We had great waiter named Daniel who left halfway through because things weren't going well for him either. He was a really nice kid and worked his ass off and we were sad to see him go. He was replaced by a guy who must not have had any experience because he managed to wait on us in a puzzling and at times frustrating way. Not a big deal. What kinda sucked bigtime though, was our guide. His name was Sergio and he had a major chip on his shoulder. He looks like a cross between Tarzan Of The Jungle and Keanu Reeves in Point Break. He usually works for a much more high-dollar boat, and at one point he remarked that he was happy to get back to more 'well-educated' customers. Yeah, nice. We lost him halfway through and the guide who replaced him was great. Rodrigo was his name. He was excited by the nature there was to see and knew all about it and was very excited to share it with us.
Our boat was pretty much a junker. Because of all the bad comments they had recieved from previous customers, they were spending a lot of time while we were on the boat re-painting things and fixing them. The night we spent in Puerto Ayoro they had an inspection by whoever inspects boats in Ecuador...and, well, our boat failed the test. So they had to bribe the inspector, which took time, and that resulted in us spending a day sitting in port. That sucked. The Douche Captain was not even on the boat that night and we made up all sorts of stories of how his debauchery was keeping us from the open seas. That night the air conditioning in a couple of the rooms didn't work and so myself and three others slept for a while on the roof of the boat until someone fixed it at 2 in the morning. While they were painting the boat, they roped off sections that we couldn't enter and that was rather annoying too, considering the fact that we each payed a grand to be on that boat, and it was tiny to begin with. The food that they cooked went over fairly well with the group, although a few of us had some gastro-intestinal fallout. I was one of those people...again, nice. We often ate and slept while sailing and those times were very unstable on the boat. Glasses would fall off the table and plates would slide. A few of us experienced nausea and we all had a tough time eating a lot with the boat flying back and forth and side to side. Dramamine is a good thing.
This description probably makes it sounds like it was a crappy trip, but it really wasn't. I think the main reason it was great was our group dynamics. We had a varied collection of people from all over the place and people really got on well, which made the whole thing fun and made the shitty parts funny instead of frustrating. Jake and Rebecca roomed together. My roommate, who was really nice if also really stinky, was an Israeli named Omri. There was another Isreali couple in their fifties who have spent most of their lives in Canada and now live in Brasil. They were really nice as well. There was a Japanese guy named Keiji, a Scot named Mandela, three people from Sweden, a lone French girl, a French girl who was living with an Italian guy in Quito, two cute Belgian girls, a British girl, an Irish couple and a lone American girl from New York. We spent a lot of time talking and reading and eating together...and a lot of time walking and watching wildlife and just hanging out. It was really nice. We got to know each other pretty well. I get the feeling that if we didn't have such a good group, things would not have been so fun. The nature alone in Galapagos is worth going to see, but if you go on the 'budget' end of the traveler's spectrum, it helps to have a good group of comrades with whom you can brave the not so desirable parts. Like a boat that was lucky to float and a couple of bags of douche in the forms of capitan and guide.
We would generally take two walks a day; one in the early morning and then one in the late afternoon, each with a snorkeling session attached to it. As I mentioned, our first guide was not a very nice guy, so the walks we had while he was in charge were interesting, but in an odd way, sort of stressful. He would snap at you for asking the wrong question (?) or for not heeding his exact orders. If you weren´t ready to get on the motorboat to head to land five minutes before scheduled...you were chastized. (Which is odd because normally in Ecuador, EVERYTHING happens 20 minutes late!!) At one point Uri, the Isreali Canadian guy was trying to take a photo of our group on this silica and obsidian beach and the guide burst out with, "If you want to take a picture of me, you just tell me and I will stand out in front of the group, but don't try to take a photo of me while I'm trying to do my job because I know you are going to post it on the internet with a sign that says, '>Worst >Guide In The Galapagos'!" We were all like, "Whoa man, chill out." But he didn't chill out, so it was nice when he left. He made a pretty big ass out of himself and so it was funny and fitting that his last tour that he gave us was a disaster. First he dragged us through this ancient lava cave, and then through the mud-marshes nearby in search of the huge and legendary turtles. We did find them, which was great, but our enjoyment was cut short when he suddenly announced, "We're lost, we have to go now!!" and then he proceeded to run (literally) off down the path. I know we weren't very lost, if you've ever been in the woods before, then you know more or less what is going on. But he was afraid of us getting stuck out there when the sun went down so we power-walked after him. We found a road and were power-walking down it for almost an hour before we were picked up by a pickup truck carrying dogs that hunt and kill feral pigs!! Sounds exciting right? It was! So sixteen gringos pile into the back of this jalopy of a truck and we bounce all over the dirty gravel road for a long damn ways before we were let off. Sergio, the guide, was pissed off and not saying anything or looking at us at all. Our bus driver had gotten confused by the fact that we hadn't returned, and so he took off!!! With all our stuff on the bus! We ended up having to call him and he came and picked us up. Thank the lord and baby jesus that even the poorest of people in Ecuador can somehow afford a cell phone! So we made it back to the port and all, but it was a hilarious set of events. It was actually really fun, because of the group's attitude towards it...and I think it actually made that day a lot funner!
I have to mention Bernard a bit too. Every now and again you meet people while traveling that just wow you. A super unique combination of influences who have made them who they are. Well this guy Bernard, from French speaking Quebec, was one of these types of people. He was born on a farm in rural Canada and had ten brothers and sisters. (Who we learned all about.) He was raised working on the farm under the strict hand of a his father and didn't begin to travel until he was 28 years old. But once he started, he didn't ever stop for long. He never married and he struck me as being a little bit Forrest Gump-like. Just walking through mayhem right and left without a scratche left on him. He has travelled seemingly everywhere and his stories, and the way he tells them, are fantastic. He is a very just man, a man who sees things as they are, and describes them with a clarity that I find rare in humans. He has negotiated extremely dangerous situations without breaking much of a sweat and his recountings of these tales are accompanied by his great, life affirming laughter. Ejemplos: He crossed a huge desert in India on a camel, he hitchhiked through The Golden Triangle (major opium growing region in Laos, very dangerous), he lived on a houseboat amongst the violence in Kashmir, and the stories just go on and on. He remembers every date and person exactly and he does 100 pushups every morning at 6 AM. He is 53 years old and he drives a cement truck for a living. He is very difficult to sum up. He had us all laughing almost constantly with his accent and choice of words, and his unique perspective on seemingly everything. He has no email address and carries no camera. The kind of person you wish you could travel with more often.
Each night a group of passengers would play a card game called Yanif that the my Israeli roommate had learned during his mandatory three years in the army. Some would read and some would nap and we all seemed to talk non-stop about the new deck chairs that we had to sit on, the parts of the boat that were being painted, the rumors about the new guide or what would be served for dinner. After a short week we had turned into a little family of internationals. At any time one could hear conversation in english, french and spanish. It was nice.
There are, of course, many other stories to be told, but there is not the time to tell them here and now. I am sure that I will talk with each of you about this trip and I look forward to showing you photos. My camera got wet when a huge wave came over the bow of the rowboat we took to shore and so I am having a tough time getting the photos uploaded because the technology here is really out of date. Eventually I will have many more loaded onto my myspace page to check out. I hope you are all well...chau...
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