| “Oh, you’re on the Galapagos Legend as well; so are we.” The woman in the seat in front of me had twisted around and spied the round sticker on our shirts. “Actually, I think everyone on the plane is in the same boat.” They were. Ninety of us were sporting blue circles with white tortugas above the name of our ship. I had noticed that when we boarded in Quito and again when we had picked up more passengers in Ecuador’s capital, Quayaquil. Now we were all busy filling in a government questionnaire. “What’s a panga?” I asked the German tourist beside me, because everyone knows that the well-traveled Germans know more English than the English. He shrugged, embarrassed this obscure word was not familiar to him. No-one else knew it either. As the air bus banked to the left, a palpable exhilaration arose from the passengers. Everyone on the left side of the plane pointed excitedly. It wasn’t Baltra airport they were indicating, although those modest buildings on North Seymour Island could easily be seen; it was the sleek 300 ft. ship at anchor which strongly resembled our home for the next week. The Legend is not the largest of the ships that cruise these islands, made famous by Charles Darwin’s historic visits and his subsequent detonation, ‘Origin of the Species.’ It’s not the largest, but it’s up there. Although visitors can choose from a flotilla of floating hotels, from smaller sailboats and cruisers taking only six passengers to ships our size, we chose this mini-liner because in the windy season, which November was, the seas in many of the unprotected anchorages can be daunting for those of us unfortunate enough to suffer from motion sickness. It proved to be a good choice. There were other advantages too, although those preferring the smaller boats will point out that their huge advantages are the cheaper costs and the quieter trips ashore. Ten people on an island is quite different from ninety, no matter how spaced out the groups are. The Legend , however, was able to cruise further out, to islands the smaller boats couldn’t get to. It also had a full complement of up-to-date equipment, knowledgeable staff and six naturalist guides. When has a planeload of adults churned with such excitement? It almost felt like the grownup equivalent of Disneyland. We were met by several of those khaki clad naturalists who sped us through the formalities and unto the buses. Five minutes later we were shrugging into life jackets and jostling to be next in the sturdy dinghies that bobbed on the sizable wake, awaiting their turn to fill up at the dock. “Move up on the panga please. Close in,” a guide called, looking puzzled when we all turned and smiled at each other. So that was a ‘panga’. Minutes later we had boarded the mother ship, after being taught the ‘getting off of a panga’ technique, and the timing of our disembarkation with the wave action. Our adventure was beginning. Six hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador, tumbling across the equator, this archipelago of volcanoes, historically called “the Enchanted” consists of 12 main islands, 6 smaller ones and 40 islets. Our itinerary would take us to ten of them, from tiny and remote Genovesa to the large, volcano studded Isabela and Santa Cruz, where the fishing town of Puerto Ayora was located along with the Charles Darwin Research Station. Dragon Hill, with its enormous giant tortoise populations, was a bus ride away as well. The Galapagos Islands were named after these ancient creatures, coming from the old Spanish word for saddle, Galapago. (Many of the tortoises have a carapace shaped like an old Spanish saddle.) There was lots to see and the captain didn’t waste any time. As soon as we heard the announcement, ‘all passengers aboard and accounted for’, the next sound was the anchors rattling up and off we steamed to visit Genovesa Island. How to describe the next week? A dream come true? A collage of adventures? A romantic cruise? A sensory feast? A disappointment? All of those but the last. We were constantly torn between the wonders under the sea and wildlife above it. Slithering over the side of a panga with snorkeling gear to discover a Galapagos green turtle feeding just below me, swimming off the white coral beach of Gardner Bay on Espanola Island to watch parrot fish before being signaled to swim ahead to where a group of swimmers are photographing and swimming with a white tipped reef shark, the experiences never stopped. The Magnificent Frigate birds, the Red and Blue Footed Boobies, the colorful little Sally Lightfoot crabs, were all a delight to discover. The fun of churning through the dark blue seas in the panga, of discovering flamingos on a saline pond behind the beach, of photographing huge piles of marine iguanas, sea lions and nesting birds with no fear of humans, it was a never-ending thrill. Described as the world’s largest outdoor zoo, the wildlife of the Galapagos seem as happy to study the humans as the other way around. Waved Albatross, rhythmically crossing bills in a staccato mating ritual are undisturbed by the gawking crowd, while sea lions tumble in the surf at the feet of astonished bathers. We enjoyed twice daily excursions, fourteen to a panga, each with our own naturalist guide. One of the first things he told us was that due to the isolation of the islands, the animals of the Galapagos were predominantly reptiles, unlike the rest of the world where mammals were dominant. The first morning and every morning after, new world music gently weaves through our sleep and nudges us awake. A soothing voice apologizes for disturbing our dreams, and another morning begins. Breakfast, then our first excursion of the day. Later, before lunch, there may be time for a snorkel excursion. After lunch is for napping in the heat of the day, while the Legend frequently motors off to the next destination. The middle of the afternoon is time for the next guided excursion, and possible beach time. Landings are qualified as either “wet” or “dry”, so that you can plan your footwear accordingly. The evening includes a presentation in both English and German on what we can expect to see the next day, dinner at European type hours, and then the anticipated aftermath, taking our coffees to the back of the ship to stand or sit in awe of the evening and the place and the magic. No lights prick the black velvet of this sky. There is no way to differentiate land from sea, although land is not far off. The Legend lolls; splashes and sudden eruptions of water indicate that while we rest, under the sea is a different matter altogether. The evening temperature hardly differs from the day’s but without the wind or the sun, the effect is heady. Once again, we express our wonder that we finally made it here, and our delight that it is even better than we anticipated. Who would have thought the islands could be devoid of even a lighthouse....the expanse between ‘the enchanted’ could be so vast...that we could be alone here, on the only ship rocking in these ebony waters? You may come to the Galapagos to see rare birds, to get close to sea lion colonies, nearly stub your toe on a huge iguana, and to take photos of giant Galapagos tortoises but you leave with so much more than that. You leave with a sense of wonder.
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