THE GALAPAGOS NUTSHELL

Here it is:
A group of us invested bottom dollar in one of the cheaper eight day Galapagos tours. The old adage that you get what you pay for rings extremely true here. The fortunate thing was that the Galapagos Archipelago is so amazing that even a poorly organized tour, a lackluster tour guide, and numerous other annoyances weren’t enough to bring it down. We all became very good friends and had a ton of laughs.
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Animals we saw: Blue-footed boobies (you know that’s gotta be first), sea lions, sea turtles, land tortoises, land and marine iguanas, penguins, dolphins, flamingos, horses (we rode them up to a volcano crater), all sorts of fish, rays, sharks….and so on.
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We did a diving trip (see below). We snorleked with the sea lions, which was good fun and surprisingly the water, despite being at the equator was quite cold, even for the kid from Maine. We were told to pay twenty dollars for a wet suit, despite the “snorkeling equipment included” claim on my tour package. That twenty dollars still lies in my wallet.
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We learned that Finnish is a complicated language unless you are from Finland. And they have a sport where you see how far you can carry your wife over your shoulders….hmmmmm. A Boston to Helsinki round trip needs to occur in the near future.
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That will have to do it for the nutshell, but if I’m not mistaken nutshells are not meant to be long, drawn out essays. And even if I am mistaken I am still not writing more for this entry.

PHOTOGRAPHIC DISCLAIMER

THE FOLLOWING STRETCH OF BLOG WIL HAVE NO PHOTOS TAKEN BY ME. MY CAMERA WAS NICKED AT A HOSTEL IN THE GALAPAGOS. I SAY ‘MY’ CAMERA BUT I REALLY MEAN THE SCHOOL’S CAMERA THAT I NICKED FROM THEM…ANYWAY. WHAT FOLLOWS IS THE TALENTED WORK OF TWO PHOTOGRAPHERS. THE FIRST IS AN UNDERWATER SPECIALIST FROM FINLAND NAMED ORA AND THE OTHER IS A NON-AQUATIC (ALTHOUGH HE SURELY COULD SHOOT UNDERWATER) PHOTOGRAPHER FROM ENGLAND…AH, I MEAN SCOTLAND NAMED JEZ.

PHOTO BY: JEZ SUMMERS

This is a picture of a crab….as good as the picture is I really don’t feel like elaborating more.

THE GALAPAGOS GANG. SHARP LOOKING BUNCH, I’D SAY….

SNORKELING IN THE GALAPAGOS

PHOTO BY: ORA JULKUNEN

The sea lions are fun to swim with. They dart around like erratic torpedoes. Just when you think it is going to plow into you like some blood-thirsty linebacker it calmly swerves around you and swims off for another go round.

PHOTO BY: ORA JULKUNEN

This is a sea turtle.

PHOTO BY: ORA JULKUNEN

This be an eagle ray. And if I am wrong with that it is some other kind of ray.

GALAPAGOS DIVING: ISABELA DIVE CENTER REACHES NEW DEPTHS

The trip was flawed from the start. Eight of our sixteen tour members for the Galapagos wanted to dive off Isabella Island. No problem. We all paid $110 the night before and spent the morning mentally preparing for diving in the Galapagos. An hour before we were set to embark, our guide said this: “…but, there is just one problem. You need one dive master per four people and this company only has one dive master and you have eight divers in the group. So four of you cannot go diving.” Classy.
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Luckily for us one of the eight happened to be a dive master. Our Finnish friend Ora has done quite a few dives and agreed to be a dive master so we could all go under the sea. It was a low -rent tour we had, indeed. BYODM– Bring Your Own Dive Master, and you’re all set.
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As we approached the docks we see there is a smattering of small crafts and dingys in the harbor with a few more notable ones further out. Our amigo Jez points to one particularly small boat. Laughing, he says he’s found our boat. Talk about the wrong time to be right. Eight divers and three crew members crowded onto a boat fit for about four or five. (No way this can go wrong). Stashed aboard with us is all our gear strewn about the boat in no particularly organized fashion, a cooler of beer and water, and about five life jackets. Good times.
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The dive master asks us for our names, nationanlities, and how many times we’ve dived. No paperwork at all, no signatures. For all he knew I was allergic to water and boats and broken English accents. He tells us that he has dived in this spot over four hundered times and that our equipment is “Grade A”. No problem.
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We get to our destination: a huge rock about a forty-five minute jaunt from the docks. Time to get dressed into the wetsuits. Eight men (with me not even being the biggest) trying to get into wetsuits on a boat suitable for about four divers is truly a spectcle. I felt like it would be appropriate to witness the whole scene in a black and white film, speed it up and put player-piano music to it. Basically, an expensive circus act. Suits were too small, weight belts not properly weighted, fins everywhere. Stupid is a good word for the whole deal, certainly more fitting than “Grade A”.
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Finally ready we all plop into the water (one hour after arriving at the dive spot) and only four of us can submerge. The rest of us did not have enough weight on our belts so the crew gave us weights to attach to our belts one at time: another 2o minutes. I noticed the shadows on the nearby rock island growing longer.
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The first of two dives wasn’t that bad. Of course, this is coming from a novice diver who still has more fingers on my hands than dives. We saw a sea turtle, who gave us the “who the hell are you and why are you looking at me?” and swam off. We saw a ray which slowly drifted along without a care in the world. We encountered a few brightly colored fish and some coral and then it was time to surface. Good. Not great but a solid dive.
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When doing two dives it’s important to surface for a bit of time, the length of the dive determining the length of surface time. Our little bit turned into an hour and a half. We relocated to the other side of the rock island where the currents were more rough. The sun was now alarmingly low (at least for a diver), with storm clouds looming in the other direction. One by one we ended up off the boat bobbing in the rough swell. I had one fairly notable problem, evident even to a novice like myself. A stream of air bubbles were shooting out of my tank. I maneuvered back to the boat to inquire about my situation. The dive master (it’s really hard to call him that. In fact, let’s replace the word ‘master’ with ‘guy’) leaned over the boat to investigate. I asked him what the bubbles meant. His answer: “It means you have less time.” Not the answer I was looking for. In fact, it is the principle mission of human beings to avoid having “less time” in most any circumstances. Not satisfied with that response I went over to Ora (the real master of diving on this day) he shook his head and said simply “Don’t go!” Good enough for me. How sensible–heaps of air seeping our of a diving tank and maybe you should stay above the surface. Agreed.
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When I went over to the boat to see the dive guy he was nowhere to be found. He had gone into the sea on the other side of the boat. I had a couple crew members drag me in from the water. I ripped my Grade A equipment off amid a chorus of choice words to express my thoughts on this feeble dive establishment. As I sat and looked out over the water I was surprised to see the whole party still on the surface. They were spread out like a soccer team looking confused and trying to locate the dive guy. Little by little they all submerged. I was watching a real life lesson of how not to dive. To compound the difficulties, the good people at the Isabela Dive Center had us swimming against the current, which is a great way to get exhausted quick and run out of air. As for visibility the sun was behind the mountains, so what little light remianed was that of the sky at dusk. I was a bit worried because they had all submerged in different spots, and with this current it would have been easy to be lost.
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When they finally did surface, black little silhouettes among the waves, and got onto the boat the stories began. No vision, swimming like hell and going nowhere because of the current, equipment failures. Jez, who has a healthy sampling of dives under his belt said his air gauge didnt work. The tank has 3000 pounds of air and the gauge lets you know how much air, and essentially how much time you have underwater. After ten minutes he looked and his gauge read 2700 lbs. “Not bad,” he thought. Ten minutes later: 2700 lbs. “Shit,” he thought.
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The ride home didn’t prove to be any safer. We were now shrouded in complete darkness. Naturally our vessel was not equipped with a light, so we pushed on towards the docks blindly. The eight divers toasted warmish cans of beer to being alive (for now) and to the notion that our steadfast dive center crew be jobless when the sun came up tomorrow.
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As we approached the land one of the crew went to the front of the boat to check for rocks and reefs and boats and any other menacing objects in our course. At the dock we were greeted by an Ecuadorian Naval officer. He looked grim and serious. We were hoping for a hefty fine for the dive center, maybe even a public lashing. But as the crew disembarked he greeted them with smiley handshakes and helped them take off the Grade A equipment.
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My plan is to write to Lonely Planet and Rough Guide to share how blatantly unsafe the experience was for everyone on board. Hopefully, with some creative wording those guide books can make it so that the Isabele Dive Center has a little “less time” to endanger more people.

PHOTO BY: JEZ SUMMERS

The giant land tortoises are up to 180 years old. They move around like it, too. Reminiscent of Drew Bledsoe being chased out of the pocket (local New England humor, sorry anyone else). Not much else to say except we saw about seventeen million of them in eight days and once you spend five minutes in the company of these old dudes you’ve seen pretty much all they’re gonna do in their 180 years: walk slowly, look one direction, look the other, try to pull up some grass to eat….and that’s like a half hour worth of turtoise life.

PHOTO BY: JEZ SUMMERS

This little beauty is one of the many iguanas on the Galapagos that I came close to crushing with my size 13 sandals. It’s really important to watch where you step becuase there’s so many animals. I’d be taking a photo of some scenery and be walking slowly about, look down and they’ll be sixteen iguanas looking up at me, lethargically curious as to why I would want to crush them. Nothing personal. If you tasted better maybe you’d have reason to fret….

PHOTO BY: JEZ SUMMERS

The noble blue footed boobie. A bit high strung he is. You can’t see his feet in this but they are blue, hence the name.

PHOTO BY: JEZ SUMMERS

Sea lion kicking it on the beach.
These guys are remarkably at ease around humans in and out of the water. Fun as hell to swim with.

OTOVALO SATURDAY MARKET

My friend Grant and I set out miraculously late for the Saturday market in a town called Otovalo. The town is listed in the book (erroneously) as a two and a half hour bus ride. Three and half hours after leaving Quito we arrived at the market. Some people were already getting a jump on taking down their stalls. Yeah, that late.
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This market is one of the biggest in South America, so though we were late the pickings were still quite plentiful. The lateness actually worked to our advantage:
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First, there was plenty of stuff available.
Second, people were generally more occupied with wrapping up their day and packing stuff up than bothering us to buy stuff we don’t need.
Third, the “I don’t want to haul this shit home” factor was in effect with most of the vendors so we had more leverage to haggle.
Fourth, the aisles and walkways weren’t a mob scene so we moved freely.
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I’ll never go to a market on time again. Actually, to edit that last sentence, officially I have never been to a market on time, nor will I ever. The deals on crap I don’t need are more attainable later in the day. The markets are about as close to shopping as I’ll get. Haggling is kind of fun, actually. You can’t go into a mall and go into a place like the Sports Authority, take a pair of basketball shoes, read the $108 tag and say to the clerk: ” I’ll pay $60. Then have the clerk go: “No way. $104.” Then: “I’ll pay $66.” Then: “$97.” Then “$71,” and so on….
It brings a bit of competition that livens up the experience. It’s no fun being told the price and having no means of expression as to your own opinion of something’s worth. Maybe that’s why I despise conventional shopping. That, and malls to me are the fun equivalent of jamming a fork in my eye. I’ll leave you with that.
Cheers.

This is a handful of defunct Ecuadorian money called sucres. A woman was selling them. I wanted a grab a handful for something stupid to have at home that I will probably never do anything with (a.k.a. souveneir) but the woman was selling them not by the bundle but individually…for a dollar a piece. One American dollar for a piece of paper that is worthless. I will find something a little less worthless, thank you.

This is my amigo Grant posing with the little girl who made the sweater he is buying here. I think she is nine years old. It seems legit because there wasn’t a tag saying China, as is the case with some of the stuff at these markets.

The markets are always filled to the brim with colors. It’s hard to take photos of people’s stuff without them coming over and hounding you to buy it. It’s all about the quick undercover shot. Not that it is hard to say “No, gracias”, but when you have to say it four times in succession–that’s when it becomes old real quick. “No, senorita, I really don’t need a woven dress right now. You should have caught me last week…”

FEAR & LOATHING IN QUITO

Side note: (Nothing like beginning an entry with a side note) I have to apologize for slacking so much on this blog. What you are about to read or skim or pretend to read actually happened nearly two weeks ago. And yes, I could have acted as though it occurred fifteen minutes ago but I chose the honest route instead. Cast it into stone: I am a slacker with this blog, at least for now.

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Anyways:

One night in Quito my buddy Grant and I, feeling a bit too tired to hit the bars and clubs but too awake for sleep chose to stroll into a casino. The appropriately named “Casino Win” lies in the middle of the bar district of New Town in Quito and seems to be passed over by most patrons of the night scene whenever I ‘ve looked inside. The same was true that night.

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Save for a few other souls at a blackjack table we were the lone customers, definitely the only gringos. The casino was cramped with blackjack and poker tables and men in suits looking smug and serious. Overwhelming flourescent light made the place seem smaller that it was, and certainly added to its comical appeal. The place resembled a casino you’d see on a cruise boat or maybe in a truck stop outside Reno. If the cramped space and shabby lighting display wasn’t enough to ease the soul, the staff more than made up for any infirmities in the decor. The casino was teeming with suits and ties looming, glaring, nodding as if they were at the helm of a major Vegas casino. Any slight air of significance they bring to the casino is elimated at once when one caught sight of the dealers. All the dealers were adorned with little brimmed hats with neon polka-dots covering them. Class is in session.

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Though I have never considered myself a high roller at a casino, we were in fact at the high stakes table. Two dollars a hand minimum. Heavy shit, man. A few hands into balckjack and I realized how the fabulous “Casino Win” gots its name. The staff was quick with a drink, and the dealer was even quicker to send my nineteen and twenty hands to defeat. The feeling of losing to a small man in a neon polka-dot hat is not one that fills me with pride. It’s like playing basketball and losing to the guy who shows up in jeans. Thoughout the game there were at least a dozen times when the dealer showed a five or six and I failed to cash in on about ten of them. In most of those cases the dealer ended up with twenty, nineteen, and even twenty-one a few times. I even caught the dealer do a small fist pump when he flipped a four on his sixteen hand. True professional. I really did, and still do when I think about it now, despise the thought of losing to that little flourescent shit-box of a casino.

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But we had to laugh. We had to rely on our sense of humor to get us though. Afterall, it is quite depressing knowing that we gave this hapless little joint more funding for more stupid hats and abrasive lighting. And we really didn’t lose that much money. We took a quick tour downstairs where some band was setting up in a tiny alcove between stalls of slot machines. A few stalls over drunk local women sat smoking butts and feeding the one penny machines like mindless animals in a science experiment. Staff seemed oblivious to our laughing and covert picture taking, they were busy strolling around looking important in a place that makes it very hard to look important.

THE COTOPAXI REFUGE AT 14,000 FEET

OUR GUIDE FERNANDO IN FRONT OF THE REFUGE HE HELPED BUILD IN 1971

WILD HORSES IN FRONT OF VOLCANO…THAT I CAN’T RECALL THE NAME OF

VOLCAN COTOPAXI DAY TRIP

The tour started out early, but just as everything else in Ecuador it started late. I was told to be in the lobby of some hotel in the tourist district of Quito no later than seven in the morning. From there the guide would pick me (and hopefully us, meaning other people, too) up and head into Ecuador’s volcano alley and onto Volcano Cotopaxi, a popular active volcano. A group of people were gathered but they were headed to the Galapagos and left promptly at seven.

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Strange thoughts crossed my mind as I waited: Was that my tour that just left? Were the Galapagos people just getting dropped off at the airport and then the guide continues on to the volcano? Could this really be that frigged up? Could they really be twenty minutes late? Am I kissing sixty bucks goodbye and at this early hour? My next train of thought was if I was screwed out of sixty bucks and a cool experience I would have to wait until nine when the tourist agency opens to put forth my revenge. Then, what sort of revenge would be appropriate in this case? Surely I don’t plan on visiting a Ecuadorian prison, but something would need to be smashed–and smashed outside on the sidewalk to warn other prospective customers of the feebleness of the agency. Would loud English profanity be enough? It surely would be hard to book tours when their computer is in thirty-eight pieces scattered about Amazones Ave.

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My plans dissolved quickly when I heard “Yosayf?” That is Spanglish for Joseph, signaling my tour guide was there and the good people of some tour agency I can’t recall can rest easy.

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We picked up a couple from California who were doing the “everything has been taken care of for you” tour, which is not bad if you want everything taken care of for you and want to pay the money and don’t mind being told constantly “Okay, back on the bus…” and “Okay, we have twenty minutes here, then back on the bus.” Nice people, though. The drive through the valley of volcanoes was spectacular. Similar to Colorado, but with crazier driving. So, I guess kind of like Massechusetts but with huge volcanoes.

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Our guide is a friendly Ecuadorian man named Fernando, who at age 69 has, in the last five years climbed to the Cotopaxi refuge camp (which sits at over 14,000 feet), 387 times. The refuge is where climbers overnight before summitting (over 18,000 feet) the volcano at sunrise. We drove up to about 12, 100 feet and hiked the rest. The hike was humbling to say the least, especially knowing that people do the same thing with 60 pound packs, then continue to the summit. I’m not in terrible shape but it was hard not being out of breath. Midway through the hike Fernando informed us that he and his college professor had, in 1970, devised the idea of building the refuge. That means for a year and a half they fundraised and hired various contracters to build the place. It was even more impressive when he pointed to the place way down the mountain where the supplies were dropped off and then pointed way up to the refuge, which meant a whole lot of lugging at high elevation. But what resulted is climbers world wide being able to access the summit, and relatively lazy tourists like myself being able to reach the refuge.

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At the refuge we picked Fernando’s brain for stories about the volcano and the refuge. I also ran into two brothers from Montreal that I had seen and hung out with in Quito a week earlier. Those occurences, while coincidental seen to happen a lot traveling down here. They were going to summit the volcano the next day then onto Colombia so maybe we’ll connect up there. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing that I’ve seen down here…

OLD TOWN: THE BASILICA & THE VIEW FROM THE TOP

TELEFERIQUO: Spanish for Kick-Ass Gondola Ride

This adventure was a highlight so far. The gondola takes you up to 13,000 feet and overlooks Quito and seemingly everything else in the Western Hemisphere.

QUITO, ECUADOR: FAST TIMES AT 9,500 FEET

Arrival: Sometime in the afternoon the plane crunched loudly on the runway of the Quito airport with the following developments apparent: The Panamanian airport staff didn´t take into account that torrential downpours tend to make baggage wet when left uncovered–thoroughly wet. The good people of Apple make a completely shit product in the iPod (Jan. 2007-June 2007) but at least it made it all the way to Boston´s Logan Airport. Good work guys.

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Those are merely material problems, though. Call that last paragraph: venting. In other aspects of travel things were pleasant. Quito is a beautiful city–which is not an easy title to come by for most Latin Maerican cities. It is a long, narrow strip of buildings squashed in between thirteen and fourteen thousand foot mountains/volcanoes. It’s divided into three main parts as far as the typical traveler is concerned. There is Old Town, which is the very attractive colonial section with all the churches, government buildings, plazas and other photogenic sights. Then there is New Town (let’s keep it simple) or as it is called by locals: Grinoglanderia, where all the hostels, bars, restaurants and amenities are–very fun but quite charmless. I saw more gringos here than in Miami. And the third part of the city is called “everywhere else” and does not get much use by travelers.

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One positive byproduct of having a soaked bag was that I wasn´t alone. An Irish backpackr coming from Colombia (and rounding out a full year travel adventure) had the same problem (power in numbers) so we hung out in Quito. Good chum he is, from County Cork. We even found an “Irish” bar which, after hearing Bryan´s description of what makes a real Irish pub, I felt like changing its name from “Kilkenny’s” to something like “Juan’s” or “Pablo’s Nice Try”. No Guiness on tap, but a substitute dark beer that wasn’t too bad was available, but the back breaker came when I ordered us two shots of Jameson. The bartender grabbed two half gallons of Jameson that were prominently displayed behind the bar, held them upside down and said apologetically that they were just for show. Of course, I didn’t expect for one minute to have any Guiness or Jameson for the duration of the trip but what a painful tease it was.

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Side note: After hearing Bryan’s Irish pub explanation I’m confident that I haven’t seen any true Irish pubs, not even in Portland or Boston, which was a bit humbling.

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My accommodation has been a sweet family run hostal which has a reggae theme (which means two Bob Marley posters behind a small wooden bar) which, for seven dollars a night and my own room, I have come to be quite fond of. I get to/have to practice Spanish with the owners and their little kids. Good people.

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As far as the social scene is concerned in Quito it is quite happening on all days/night with the predictable exception of Sunday. The South American Cup (soccer) is going on right now so on days when Ecuador is playing the place goes nuts, and its hard not to get swept up into the fever of it all. Apparently, I now strongly dislike Chile because they came back to beat Ecuador 3-2–funny, until that night I would’ve regarded my relation ship with Chile as peaceful and diplomatic.

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As for other folks I´ve met: a couple from outside Philly and a crazy Kiwi (from New Zealand’s north island), both parties I hope to meet up with in Colombia. Also an Americano who has a camp in Maine during the summer, and a Chicagoan (Chicagonian? Chicagish? Chicagistanian?) who is headed to the west coast of Africa after South America. My seemngly long six week trip suddnely seems like a quick trip to pick up sandwiches at Cafe Rick´s in Wilton when I talk to other travelers.

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Note: Cafe Rick´s is a local Wilton, Maine reference, which I realize not all of the people reading this have experienced (yet).

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And that seems like a good note to end on.