I awake at 6:15, and I start today’s adventure with yet again another gorgeous, sunny, bright cloudless sky. The rain from last night has cleared, and there is more humidity and less air movement. The temperature must be around 80 degrees, as usual. Today is the day for Los Gemelos.
I start the day knowing that I won’t shower until I come home, but what I really need to do is my laundry. I looked at the washer last night and it was empty. I want to wash most all of my clothes, so I wait until morning to launder. As I am up at the crack of dawn, I gather my laundry and start the washer. I will add to it as I change out of my ‘go to the bathroom’ clothes for the ones that I wear for this excursion. It makes me crazy how long the washer takes to fill and finally I have solved the problema. I take the hose that is used to do hand-washing and squirt it into the drum of the washer. I can fill that puppy in no time. Then set the machine to wash and it agitates! I let it run the rest of the cycle until it is back to filling again. I open the lid and fill it up. It agitates for the last time and spins. All this in 30 minutes instead of 2 hours. Hooray!
Frida told me to wear long pants because of the fire ants. Yikes! And, bring a raincoat because it might rain. I am prepared. I take everything: bottle of water, long sleeved white shirt, my cheapy raincoat from OSJL, insect repellant, umbrella, sunscreen, toilet paper (you can never be too prepared, right?), camera, baseball hat. Whew! My backpack is heavy, but I can do this.
Not bringing hiking boots, I wear socks and sneakers again. I wear the longest pants I have (capris) and a regular Tee-shirt. I put sunscreen on my face, neck, ears arms and what little part of my legs aren’t covered by pants or socks. I hate the feeling of this stuff, very gooey, oily and yucky.
I meet Frida at the circle and she asks me if I have the keys to the Library with me. No, but I can go get them. She says that there is a good book on Galapagos flora in the Library and we should bring it. I go get the keys in my room, we get the book and off we go with a taxi driver who will be with us all morning. He drives to pick up two more women that Frida has invited to come with. I have always been of ‘the more the merrier’ school, so this will be merry!
Rosemary is Galapagueños; she was born in Santa Cruz. And the other woman is Asian. I missed her name, but I do remember seeing her at the Station yesterday walking around. After I ask, Didn’t I see you walking around the Station yesterday? I tell her that I was sitting at the circle yesterday reading. She remembers me now. We laugh.
The driver takes us up to the Santa Cruz Highlands. We pass through town, then a smaller town to the north, Bellavista. We are in the National Park, but these little towns and their agricultural farms or cattle ranches were here before the Park was formed in 1959. About 3% of the land area is not National Park; the other 97% is! We drive through an even smaller town, Santa Rosa. If we are stopped because we don’t have a National Park Guide, Rosemary will talk our way out of it because she is a native showing friends the sights (which I don’t think is legit, but I’m along for the ride, right?). Any time you go to any location in the Park, you have to have an official guide. Tourism is the islands only income and Guides are trained and must be used.
The air temperature up in the Highlands is much cooler and it is much greener. More moisture and more rain here support a forest of Scalesia trees, which are relatives of daisies, of all things! Los Gemelos (The Twins) are a pair of very large sinkholes on either side of the road, but can’t be seen while you are on the road. The taxi driver parks and we walk in on the path. Unfortunately, I don’t take a picture of the sign at the head of the trail. Others are already on the trail and at the first crater. I snap some pix. There is another much smaller sinkhole here too.
Rosemary says Let’s cross the road, and we do. No one is on this side. We walk on the trail just a little way in and there is the second twin, much larger than the first. We walk the path and look at the plant life. We find an orchid, but no blossoms. We find moss hanging from the Scalesia trees. We see only one bird, the Galapagos Dove. It is so camouflaged that I can’t honestly get a good picture of it! The walk ends when a fallen tree crosses the path and blocks our way. We turn around and go back. Now we are back where we started looking over the edge into the depths. A Guide comes along with 3 people in tow and says, Here is the other one, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, and they are gone. I am amazed that this is all these poor people got to do; see one, see the other, and be gone. Frida says they are probably on a tight schedule. I’m thinking, Yeah, but did they even know that they were here?! Anyway, then we take another path that follows the crater up to a higher area, good lookout and end of the path. We take a little rest and hike back to the taxi (which you remember is a truck).
Our driver is ready to take us to the Rancho Mariposa where we can see tortoises in the wild, but on a private farm. The driveway is a road that is windy and bumpy, reminding me of the road on Martha’s Vineyard on the way to Tashmoo. Slow going and you will get there. We arrive at the rancho, and it is set on a hill overlooking the Western part of the Pacific Ocean. We can see other Galapagos Islands in the distance. It is breathtaking in its expanse. This reminds me of a house and garden that Karen and I visited in Newport RI. The house was perfectly perched to take in the long view of the downward sloping lawn and then the ocean, complete with sailboats. At least these two persons knew how to sight a home.
There is lemongrass tea or coffee, whatever is your pleasure. I haven’t had a cup of brewed coffee since Quito, and I go for the coffee with sugar and milk. Yum. We pay a guide $6 to take the four of us out into the farm to see the tortoises. Believe me without a guide, you wouldn’t find any, and you’d be lost for on this farm for days! Rosemary reminds us to put on sunscreen and I take out my white long sleeved shirt and put it on instead.
The first tortoise is so crammed into the underbrush we can hardly see it, and it definitely is not snapshot worthy. The guide has his machete out and is cutting down branches as we proceed. The guide finds (or takes us to) two big old males. They are huge, easily 110 years old each; one has lichen growing on his back. I have no idea what they could weigh. These Galapagos tortoises have the dome-shaped shells and eat grass. These two are face to face waging some kind of machismo battle. We sit and watch for a few minutes clicking madly away. Next our guide finds another big male sitting under a tree eating grass. This seems like a perfectly logical thing to be doing on a Sunday morning; relaxing in the shade and eating brunch. Although we can get pretty close, the photos are only good when his head is raised up, and you can see it through the grass. Next our guide finds a female. She is head facing into a huge avocado tree. You can tell that it is a female because her dome is even more pronounced than the male. Since we only get to see her hind legs and tail (and shell, of course), it is amusing to note that she must have been in a muddy pond recently as the top of her dome is clean and dark brown, but she has this rust colored ‘skirt’ around the bottom, including her discolored legs and tail. Very cute, and rather feminine (a two-toned ensemble using solid colored earth tones).
We are done walking the fields and head back to the ranch for one more beverage before we go. I have the lemongrass tea this time and it is delicious. I take off my long sleeve shirt and I am cooler already. We relax, take in the view, feel the on-shore breeze once again, and have a quick preview look at our pix on our cameras. It is noon, and we say good bye and get into the taxi once again. I put my backpack in the back of the truck and we head out on the long driveway. It sure looks like rain, Rosemary says No, it won’t rain, we are headed to [south] into town. So we get on the highway and it starts to rain. Rosemary asks the driver to pull over so I can retrieve my backpack. And, off we go. It really is amazing how you can see the different zones of plant life as we descend. There are seven vegetation zones on just on this one island.
The taxi driver for the morning cost $30, or $7.50 each. Good deal! We are dropped off near the kioskos, because it is almuerzo (lunch) time! The Asian woman declines, so Rosemary, Frida and I go to a restaurant that has the choice of pollo (chicken) or goat for the fixed price of $3.00. Rosemary wants chicken, I want chicken, Frida wants goat and we are all satisfied. The soup is chicken with rice, potato and carrot. Steaming hot. Both Frida and Rosemary can’t tolerate it (it’s too hot for them, but perfect for me!). The main meal is a small cut of chicken in a very tasty sauce with rice and one slice of fried plantain. The drink is avena, a concoction of water, oatmeal and passion fruit. Sounds kind of gummy, but tastes truly yummy!
Our lunch conversation is once again me trying to solicit advice on how to figure out how a boat tour for George and I in May. At least May is not the high season, and we won’t be spending a major fortune (just a minor one). Frida says come back to my house and we’ll surf the Internet for cruises for you. She knows the boats and many of the tour operators, so I say Yes.
We each pay for lunch, and I buy an extra bottle of water for 60 cents, too. I think of it as Just in case. Rosemary parts company from us and we walk to Frida’s apartment. It is on the 3rd floor of a 4 story apartment building. It looks newly built and her apt. has a little balcony facing south overlooking Academy Bay. Very nice. She used to live on the 4th floor here, where the view was even better, but it was a studio (smaller). This apt has 2 bedrooms. We surf the net and she gives me some ideas.
I thank her for her hospitality, and walk home. It is 2 PM, the heat of the day. I’m not going to stop to put on sunscreen, so I put my long sleeved shirt on again.
I decide to walk up to the house I think is Graciela’s, the woman selling her bike. I think I have found the house, and I knock at the wooden gate. No answer. It is very warm and very sunny on the rest of my walk back to the Station. I stop several times to drink my water. I decide to go straight to the Library, to return the flora identification book to the shelves and to cool off in the air conditioning and read and write emails. It takes my body a long time to cool down. I write Lolly, Judy and George. Today was the Slater Museum of Art (Norwich, CT) reception for their annual art show. George had two pieces in it. I am sorry to miss it, but he wrote to tell me about it. I write Marion. I write Marcia who lives in Guayaquil to get the email address of her best friend’s daughter who lives and works in Galapagos (I am hoping Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz where I am).
The Polish woman told me that I should definitely read Vonnegut’s Galapagos, a novel, if I haven’t. It is on the library shelf and I check it out to myself, lock up the Library and head back to my room. I think that I might go swimming again, but I talk myself out of it.
I take my laundry off the washline, bring it back to my room and fold it. Mari is resting; remember she had to work today.
I unpack my backpack, and read Vonnegut. He has a very peculiar writing style that I really like. He tells you what is going to happen as he writes about what is happening. An interesting approach. I have given up on Stephen Fry for awhile.
At 6:30 PM, I eat my cereal and raisins with milk for the first time in a long time. It tastes so much better than cream and cereal, it is amazing! It never did rain, and the stars are out. I can see Orion, the Big Dipper, etc. I need to get online and see the Southern sky constellations to name more. Mari asks if she can recharge her MP3 player on my computer. Wha? Yes, you turn on your computer, I plug the MP3 player into a USB port and my MP3 gets recharged. I’ve no problem with that and so my computer is now on, and I start to blog.
As I consider Los Gemelos, I am reminded of what my friend Meg says, Well, well, well; three holes in the ground. And she is absolutely right, I saw three sinkholes in the ground today myself! Well, well, well.
I wash my face and brush my teeth. It is 10:15 PM now, time for Mari and me to head to dreamland. It was a great day in tortuga-land for me today. Well, well, well.
