Galapagos Cruise: Days 1-2

Warning: this entry is a bit whiny, but I have to get a few things off of my chest.

Being on a boat with 17 strangers has reminded me of how much I dislike people. Honestly, there isn’t even anyone I particularly dislike personally on this cruise, it’s just that being stuck with people I don’t know is so completely distasteful to me. It doesn’t help that instead of the like-minded travelers I anticipated meeting on this boat (people who love travel and nature and who took the initiative to plan a trip to the Galapagos), we have been put in a boat with a woman who said, “hey! who wants to go on a cruise to the Galapagos with me?” and 14 of her friends and family members who said, “sure! why the hell not?!” Plus one adorable British couple on their honeymoon. It has created a very different dynamic than what we expected. To be fair, they are all perfectly lovely people, there’s just much more of an emphasis on the drinking and sun bathing and loud conversations in the wildlife areas and LITERALLY NO ONE CARES ABOUT BIRDS AT ALL. So…not my crowd.

On the plus side, the boat is comfortable, the food is delicious, the crew is fantastic, and the wildlife we have seen so far has been wonderful. We have seen Galapagos penguins (a must-see for Diane!), flightless cormorants (a perfect example of evolution in the Galapagos), a GIANT (sleeping) tortoise in the wild, and lots of iguanas. As for birds, we have seen tons of finches, storm petrels, frigatebirds, blue footed boobies, a pair of flamingoes, and many others (side note: we have seen a couple of Galapagos lava herons, but Merlin doesn’t have them listed at all! Don’t fret, I wrote to them to let them know). In the water we have seen black tipped sharks (small and harmless), a Galapagos bull nosed shark (also very small and harmless), a school of golden rays, sea turtles, an octopus (spotted by Diane!), a tiger snake eel, sea stars, and a few balloonfish.

On a beach full of sea turtle nests we saw a great blue heron hunting for confused baby turtles hatching at the wrong time. We saw it get away with one, hopefully it didn’t get any more.

On another beach, Diane and I were in the surf when a male sea lion swam right up to us and chuffed in our faces! He was apparently annoyed we were trespassing on his beach.

And the top sighting for Zach on father’s day: boobies! A flock of blue footed boobies were torpedoing from the sky down into the water as we made our way back to the airport to meet the cruise ship. They are so fun to watch and are shockingly graceful in the air and in the water. I do hope we also get to see them on land.

You can’t enter the Galapagos national park areas without a certified guide, and our guides Javier and Yazmany are experts, great lovers of nature, and also really want to make sure everyone on the trip has a great experience. In fact, Yazmany said he was near tears one day before we arrived when the boat didn’t see hammerheads like he had promised.

However, though the guides may be knowledgeable generalists, they are definitely not bird specialists. For example, I asked Yazmany, “I keep seeing a petrel fly by, which kind is it?” “A storm petrel!” he answered. “Yes, I know,” I said, “but which of the three kinds?” He looked at me blankly and sent me to the other guide, Javier, who picked one of the three on my Merlin app seemingly at random. I am definitely the biggest bird nerd on this boat.

Another example was on a short hike when I saw a Galapagos hawk hovering right above where half of our group was standing with both guides. They were all chattering excitedly so I thought, of course! They are looking at the hawk! I approached them and quickly realized no one had seen it. When I pointed it out to the guides they were so surprised… then the news started trickling through the group like a game of telephone and more than one person said, “oh! where’s Karen? She’ll want to see that!” Very sweet, but omg.

It does make me realize I was spoiled by Jorge in Mindo. I miss him! When I can’t identify something here, I just have to continue not knowing what it is. There’s no one to tell me the answer for certain, and thus I can’t check it off on Merlin. It is torture.

The pace of this type of travel is also VERY different from what we are used to. When we first got on the boat, the rest of the group had already been here for three days and they told us, “it is go-go-go! we get no breaks, it is so, so busy!” Well. I’m pretty certain we have veeeery different ideas for what it means to be “go-go-go.”

We take short walks at the pace of an arthritic snail. We stop every few minutes to stand and listen to Yazmany talk for too long about something that was initially interesting, then we stand even longer in agony while the rest of our group asks the same idiotic questions over and over, ensuring that we are completely tuned out by the time we start moving again. Meanwhile, cool birds whizz by us that no one else notices. Back at the boat we have time between excursions and hours to relax. Meals are multiple courses and are taken at a laid back pace. We could have covered at least five times as much ground as a family on our own than we have as part of this group. In a moment of snobbery I didn’t think I would ever have in me, I whispered to Diane at one point, “I think I’m more of a ‘private tour’ kind of person.” The reality is probably that I’m more of an independent travel person, and also an introvert, which do not pair well with group tours.

The dumb questions and comments from our shipmates are even getting to Diane. At one point Yazmany was talking about the small size of the Galapagos penguins and one of the ladies on our ship said, “and to think that the emperor penguins are 6 feet tall!” I waited for the punchline, but it never came. No one corrected her. Diane’s eyes very nearly rolled into the back of her head.

I am also starting to finally believe Zach that he is not as slow as I think he is; it’s just that I move at a much faster speed than everyone else in the world. These people on our boat make Zach look like freaking Usaine Bolt. And don’t assume they are old, they are not. The average age is likely somewhere in the upper 50s. They have no good excuses.

So now back to the fun stuff. At lunchtime on our second day I was gazing out of the window and right in my immediate line of vision an ENORMOUS manta ray jumped fully out of the water into the air and belly flopped back down!! The captain of the boat and I were the only ones lucky enough to see this. Magical.

Diane and I also spent a good half hour on the upper deck watching magnificent frigatebirds soaring just over our heads, riding the airstream from the boat. We were worried the entire time that one would poop on us, but it was also so delightful and mesmerizing that we couldn’t bring ourselves to move away.

One our first night on the boat the crew had a cocktail hour to welcome us and asked for one fact about us (my nightmare) and Zach told everyone that this trip is in celebration of our 20 year wedding anniversary. Then the next night they surprised us by decorating our room and our dinner table, and by baking a giant cake for everyone for dessert! It was very kind and thoughtful.