Birthday buddies

So, real talk. I'm at the point in my life when I can pretty reliably expect to have to get up and pee at least once overnight. I've come to terms with that. But trying to do so on a small boat underway in the South Pacific is a very serious undertaking. We have a tiny little bathroom in our cabin no more than two steps away from my bed. Shouldn’t really be that difficult. But it’s pitch black. Not that I noticed, though, since if I opened my eyes, the strongly rocking ship instantly made me feel like I needed to barf. And that bathroom is WAY too small to handle any more than one body fluid at a time. 

Needless to say, it wasn't my best night of sleep. But I was excited for Quinn to celebrate his birthday and see the custom decorations. Oh, and of course get to explore another Galapagos island. Española was our site for the day, and the white board that morning had a pretty packed schedule.

And yes, you'll notice that Ivan let me write Quinn a message that morning. It was happening. We were starting to crack his anti-kid vibes.

You'll also notice the hour of breakfast. This was no luxury cruise, and that was very much on purpose. There are a few ways to see the Galápagos Islands, and doing so by boat appealed more to us than hotel hopping. Obviously the boat in and of itself was an adventure worth the price of admission. But it also allowed us to see more in the 4 days we had there. Since the boat can travel between islands overnight, we were waking up and hitting the trail before the land-based groups were even having breakfast.

But even within the boat operators, there’s a ton of variability. Although that variability tends to range from the swanky and expensive to swankier and expensiver. But we found one of the few remaining family operations left on the islands. Even better, they’re still touring using the same boat they built themselves out of local wood some 20 years earlier. It lacked some of the modern amenities, but it more than made up for it in charm. Plus the cost was half of what the luxury trips go for. That's a win on its own, but the agent that helped us book the trip brought up a good point about that. The trips in our price range tended to attract families and an all around less-pretentious clientele. We witnessed that phenomenon in the rare instances we passed another group on the trail. It was clearly the first time every single one of those people had ever carried their own backpack. Whereas on our trip, we were accompanied by a Swiss family with early-teenage kids, a high school teacher and his wife from the Netherlands, and a Chinese ex-pat who moved to Ecuador to be closer to his kids who were going to college there. All very interesting people, and all great travel companions. Which is nice, because the boat was maybe 40 feet end to end, and our children are not known for their demure subtleties. It was good to be with a group who found that endearing.

That reminds me, the Chinese family was actually on our boat because the trip they were supposed to be on used an even smaller boat, and their group had horrendous sea sickness even before they set out. So as rough as our nights have been, I took solace knowing that it could have been way worse.

Ok. That's probably enough background. Off to Española. As you may have noticed on the board, we started our day with a dry landing. For pretty much every hike, the crew took us from our big boat to shore using little dinghies. Sometime they had to drop us a few feet offshore and we waded in, sometimes they could pull right up to a rocky pier. This was the latter, so we stepped right off the boats and stayed dry. We would have appreciated that at 7:30 am on any overcast day. But it was particularly nice this week, as the islands were experiencing an unseasonably cold current coming up from the south (where it was still mid-winter).

I'm not going to describe the beginning of our hike. I'm just going to show it to you first. You’ll see why in a minute.

This is Quinn. You know him. It's his birthday today. Happy birthday, Quinn.

Now look behind him at those lava rocks. With tails. And claws. And teeth. That part of the island was absolutely crawling with gigantic Hood Lava Lizards. It took a real effort to not step on them as we were hiking. They could easily span an entire section of trail, and they weren't going to move for us. This was their island.

The next portion of our hike was markedly more adorable. The giant albatross that also inhabited the island were just coming out of their mating season. We got to see a bit of their bizarre mating dance (are there any that aren't), but also got to see a bit of the end result.

Yep. That's a baby albatross under it's mama. As cute as you'd imagine.

Speaking of their mating dance, National GeoMimi got another awesome video of it. The cinematography is not what we've come to expect from her, but that's because of her tripod (me). I had to put her on my shoulders to get the shot, but couldn't help checking out all the other scenery around us. Hence the "Oh my gosh, Dad, stop moving" about halfway through.

We also saw some more blue footed boobies, and since each island has its own distinct climate and seasonal patterns, the mating cycle was a bit further along than on the last island. We saw several mamas brooding over their eggs, and even a few babies.

If you look closely at that second photo, you can see a baby that couldn't have been more than a few days old.

Once we got our fill of adorable avians, we headed back to the boat for a quick sail to the nearby Gardner Bay. We were going to spend the afternoon at a swimmable beach. Following our attempt to keep our kids from playing at the last (fire ant infested) beach, this was a welcome reprieve for all of us.

After taking what may very well be this year's holiday card photo (act surprised when you get it), Aimee and I used the opportunity to chat with our guide, Ivan. We could tell that he was warming up to our kids, and I wanted to seal the deal.

We learned that, contrary to what I presumed when we first met him, he does have kids. Five of them, in fact. His wife kept wanting to try for a girl, and 5 tries later decided to throw in the towel. But Ivan clearly has a lot of pride in his kids. All of them are now grown professionals, with the exception of his youngest, who is still in school to become a marine biologist. As you can imagine, becoming one of the naturalists for such an important site is a common aspiration for kids who grow up here.

Ivan's plan was to work for another few years and then retire once his youngest is done with school. He reminisced about the changes he has seen over the years. The most visible were the significantly decreased animal counts brought on by climate change. But he was happy with the islands' increased protections over the past couple of decades. The Ecuadorean government has taken big steps to solidify the national park status. They’ve also had lots of international support, given how much the entire world has learned from this area. To that point, the parks have a very strict prohibition on touching animals. After some very harmful interactions between children and animals in the past, the park instituted an outright ban on any visitors under 12 years old until just recently. Years of declining tourism throughout the pandemic were exacerbated further by how the drug violence has been portrayed internationally. So to keep the local community solvent and prevent the type of ecological degradation that can often follow rapid descents into poverty, the regional government decided to start allowing children again with the hopes of attracting more families. Mission accomplished.

We were completely unaware of all of this. In fact, it only came up when we asked Ivan how often he has kids on his trips. He said flatly, "Never." He's been doing this continuously for thirty years, and our kids were the first he had ever brought to the islands. We were clearly shocked to hear that. He recounted several stories from other trips that resulted in both animals and children being seriously harmed (with more than a few deaths in both parties). That clearly explains the trepidation Ivan showed when we first arrived. He had noticeably warmed to our kids over the last few days, but it was still nice to have him explicitly say that he enjoyed having them on the trip. He described them as, "bien tranquillo" (nice and calm). I don't know if I'd use that term as a universal description of them, but I would agree that they really nailed the concept of keeping the park wild and protected.

To illustrate that point perfectly, the kids had a very charming interaction with one of the more curious sea lions on the island. As we were talking to Ivan, the kids’ new friend took a wide pass to check out smaller humans than it had likely ever seen before.

Then it came a little closer.

And then it finally just came right on shore.

It definitely seemed like it wanted to play with our kids.

Our kids know that not only are we not supposed to touch the animals, but we also shouldn't let them touch us. So on more than one occasion, the kids had to run away when the sea lion wanted to join their sand castle making.

Although they eventually found a happy equilibrium.

By then of the afternoon, our kids were ready to join the sea lions' pack, and the feeling appeared mutual.

It was legitimately difficult to tell which species of children was more sad about us having to head back to the boat. But once we got there, the kids were happy to warm up with a cup of tea. 

As you can tell from the beach photos above, it was a bit overcast. Coupled with the cold current, that led to a pretty chilly afternoon. It also led to a pretty choppy trip to our next and final stop, San Cristobal. To be honest, it would have been a miserable journey if we didn't have the most amazing distraction from our sea sickness.

Through our closed eyes in the ship's dining area, we heard Ivan call our kids over to show them something.

It took a minute to see what they were talking about, but then we saw the dolphin that was swimming alongside our boat! And then the other!

And then the rest of the pack!

That sight alone would have been the kind of thing we'd talk about for years. But then they started to breach and play right in front of us!

The kids then immediately told us, "Thanks so much, Mom and Dad! This is an amazing experience and we are going to show our appreciation by being kind to each other all the time and getting ready for school next year without any whining or drama." Or at least that's how I interpreted the expressions on their faces.

It definitely seemed like we were heading that way. The kids were super adorable as we sailed into port.

Or maybe is was just delirium from too much sun that week.

Either way, I wasn't going to complain. The night became even more delightful as the sun went down and we looked up to see the Southern Cross together. Or as the kids called it, the "Southern Kite." Not a bad description.

But the icing on the cake was literally icing on the cake. To all of our surprise, the crew made a birthday cake for Quinn after dinner. And it was presented by none other than Ivan, the kids' new BFF. We did it.

It was an absolutely lovely day, and I was grateful that all four of us are now likely old enough to actually have some permanent memories of it.

Happy birthday, Quinn.

Sea wolves, flamingos, and a Baroness

There are worse ways to wake up than floating in the South Pacific anchored off one of the Galápagos Islands.

That island happened to be Floreana, one of the more storied islands out here. And that’s saying something.

Floreana has a freshwater spring that has provided sanctuary to eons of animals and 300 years of intermittent human inhabitants. Never home to any indigenous humans, it was a frequent stopover for pirates and whalers during the peak eras of both professions. It played a critical role in the communications network of the time. A barrel set up in the early 1800s served as a makeshift post office, allowing ships to drop off letters and also pick up any addressed to the places they might be heading. Freshwater and a single barrel count as downright metropolitan out here, so when German Physician and Nietzsche enthusiast, Friedrich Ritter, was looking to create a post-nihilistic Eden to escape from the excesses of post WWI and percolating Naziism, he selected Floreana. I’m not sure it was the most inspired of choices (it’s effectively a desert, we’ll get to that in a bit), but this is a person who removed all of his own teeth before the trip to avoid any dental problems. I don’t think he was starting with all his marbles, to put it mildly.

Ritter brought his lover, Dore Strauch (both of them leaving families behind in Europe), to Floreana and they attempted to forage an existence out of pretty limited resources. I get the impression that they weren’t the most prepared of survivalists. A particular gem from their story that illustrates this point nicely is that when Dore’s teeth started to go, Ritter pulled the rest of them and the pair shared a single set of dentures to eat all their meals. Gross.

The letters Ritter sent to newspapers back home generated a lot of public interest, and somehow Ritter was surprised when the letters he published in major German newspapers about building an island paradise attracted people from Germany looking for an island paradise. He wanted to build an island paradise, but his definition of paradise included no other inhabitants. So he was more than a little chagrined when the first boats started to make their way towards "his" island. The first to arrive were Heinz and Margaret Wittmer, who, despite setting off for a desert island four months pregnant with their first child together, are still the closest thing to sane in this entire escapade. That becomes strikingly obvious when the next to arrive is the self-proclaimed “Baroness” von Wagner and her two man-servants. They all get along about as well as you’d imagine a philosopher-hermit, a German Family Robinson, and an eccentric wannabe socialite would. Disaster(s) ensues, and several of them wind up dead under very mysterious circumstances.

I’m trying not to take up this entire blog post by rehashing this bizarre train wreck of a story, but it’s pretty hard to get out of my mind. Watch the 2013 documentary about it, or simply Google “Freidrich Ritter.” Either way, you’ll spend about two hours immersed in this story and will never be the same again. I also just discovered that there’s a dramatization of this story coming out later this year staring Jude Law as Freidrich Ritter. I. Can’t. Wait.

Ok. Travel blog. We’re traveling.

After a nice breakfast [Ritter], we set off on a little dinghy [Baroness] for one of the mini islands [four months pregnant] dotting Floreana’s coast. Sorry. I’m really trying here. It's such a bizarre story. But I think I can finally move on now.

The main attraction of the after-breakfast stop was to get our first good look at sea lions (lobos del mar, or sea wolves, in Spanish).

Although, as a parent, it was equally fun to watch my kids get a good look at the sea lions.

But all four of us melted over seeing our first blue footed boobies.

They’re real! They exist in other places besides the t-shirts people bring back from the Galápagos Islands!

We happened to be there during mating season, and got to watch their adorable to the point of ridiculous courtship ritual.

Kudos to Mimi for snagging that awesome video. Usually the only thing I get when I let her borrow my phone is 10 minutes of deleting photos of one of her eyeballs. But she’s really starting to get the hang of it now.

Our hike took us through scenery that wouldn’t seem out of place back home in Arizona. It’s easy to forget this when we’re in the middle of the South Pacific, but the Galapagos straddle the equator. And like most places along the equator, they don’t get a lot of rain.

From there, it was over to Floreana Island proper, and of course the requisite stop at Post Office Bay.

These days, the only letters coming or going are in the hands of tourists. So we looked (unsuccessfully) for any addressed to people in Arizona, and left a few postcards of our own.

[Don’t hold out hope that any of you will ever get them. I noticed that all of the letters in the very full barrel were dated within the last few days and I’m 100% sure the guide surreptitiously “deliver” a big batch of letters to the incinerator every time they get back to the inhabited islands.]

Then it was back to the boat for some lunch and lounging ahead of our afternoon hike.

This was after the four of us were out cold taking a very solid nap. Too much fun.

Flamingos. There are also somehow flamingos on this island. That was the main attraction of our afternoon hike.

At least is is for pretty much everyone else who visits there. But our children were pulled to the beach with a magnetism shown only by kids who grew up in the desert.

“What, Dad?! Sure, this island is teeming with some of the most unique biology in the world. But there’s sand AND water in the same place!”

Although that particular beach was apparently teeming with fire ant eggs, contact with which causes a burning sensation not unlike the bite of an adult. Our guide, Ivan, told us that with the direct gruffness we were learning was his baseline around anything related to children. "Don't play on beach. You'll be burning all night." I wasn’t sure if I was just imagining his antipathy towards little ones until back on the boat that night, when I asked Ivan if there was anything I could use as birthday decorations. (I realized just after putting Quinn to bed for the last time as a 5 year old that I left the “Happy Birthday” banner Aimee made in the bag we left at Alicia’s. Not great.) I got a real hard, “No.” from Ivan, and realized I’d be on my own for this. 

I wasn’t really sweating the interpersonal element; I knew we’d win him over by the end of the trip. But I did need to come up with something to undo my mis-pack. So I scoured the ships humble take-one, leave-one library, and figured no one would miss what appeared to be a German romance novel from the early 90s.

I quietly ripped out a couple dozen pages, and wrote F-E-L-I-Z C-U-M-P-L-E-A-Ñ-O-S on them. I strung the pages up on the nylon cord that I had also used as our alarm system in Cotacachi and patted myself of the back for what I thought was a halfway-decent banner, given the circumstances.

I was just happy that Quinn could barely even read the Feliz Cumpleaños part of the banner or else his first words in German would make even the Baroness blush.

Ah! I thought I was done with that story. Guess not. I should probably just go to bed and try not to dream of pulling out my own teeth. With our boat now underway to the next island and gently rocking back and forth in the water, that wasn't going to be a problem. Gute Nacht.

A plane to a bus to a boat to a truck to a boat to a bus to a tortoise

The departure was early. Very early. Traveling to Las Islas Galapagos is like traveling from one country to another. Entry permits, bag inspections, back to entry permits because you got the wrong one, bag to bag inspection to now finally drop them off. It’s a complicated process. But it’s hard to not be excited throughout all of it. Although it seemed like we were the only ones. We heard several other tourists grumbling about the process, and we judged them heavily. You’re going to the Galápagos Islands. You can’t whine about it.

But we realized that this was a different class of tourist than we had encountered throughout the rest of our trip. As you may have seen, there is a real but isolated flare up of drug violence as cartels from the bordering countries try to find new routes for their products. Emphasis on isolated. For the past three weeks, we’ve seen next to no direct evidence of this. But the people we were walking past in the airport didn’t know that. They’re flying in from Miami, getting their Galapagos permit, and catching a connecting flight to the island. It didn’t matter if the islands were part of Ecuador or part of Mars. Just a necessary stopover. One traveler we overheard had to spend the night in Quito, and made no secret of his unmatched bravery. For context, I was also out on the mean streets of Quito the night before. Here’s what I came across on my grocery run.

Nine recycling options. Nine. This city is adorable.

Also, for anyone who knows my wife, you are 100% correct in assuming that she lost her mind when I texted that photo to her back at Alicia’s apartment. Lost. Her. Mind. We were one compost can away from moving there immediately.

But back to the airport. After we navigated the permit process and dropped our checked bag, we made our way through one of the nicest international airports I had ever been to. Like most airports these days, the security check was followed by what was essentially a mini shopping mall. Even that was pleasant.

But the real attraction to any traveling parent was the kids’ play space.

Our kids could have spent hours there. Which was good, because they did. As our boarding time approached, we saw suspiciously little activity around the gate. The door was still closed, and there wasn’t a plane at the end of the jet bridge. Not looking great, but at least we were comfortable and had enough snack bars to last us a week. And then suddenly, about 10 minutes after we were scheduled to take off, the flight status board switched from “On Time” to “Gate Closed.” Not cancelled, not even delayed, just boarding closed. The airport wasn’t that big, and we certainly would have heard an announcement if the gate changed. So I figured this was just one of those quirks of traveling internationally. Different protocols, different routines. We’d figure something out. At least we weren’t traveling for anything critical. I assumed that was the case for everyone flying to the Galápagos Islands at 9 am on a Thursday in mid-July. But you wouldn’t know it by the scene at the gate. There was a near riot of affluent, confused foreigners barking in at least four different languages. This was a class of people not used to encountering bumps in the road. I was just happy to see how multicultural the crowd was. The US no longer has a monopoly on entitled tourists. I call that progress.

We did eventually get on the plane. During the hubbub at the gate, the status board quietly switched from “gate closed” to “delayed.” Undoubtedly a late arrival or some mechanical issue. Nothing worth getting upset over. Need a few more minutes to make sure the plane is safe? You got it.

The flight itself was largely uneventful. But I had to come to terms that Mimi has now entered her late elementary school phase, as evidenced by the heart that is now part of her signature.

There was also some sort of fumigation spray that was released throughout the plane just before we landed. The flight attendants announced that it was safe and approved by the World Health Organization. But that didn’t prevent more than a few panicked expressions and breath-holding spells throughout the cabin.

And just like that, we were in the Galapagos! We deplaned in the type of open air tropical airport that warms my soul every time.

From the runway, we followed a painted path on the ground into the lone building on airport grounds. It was the biosecurity checkpoint. For obvious reasons, the Ecuador and regional Galapagos governments take their ecological diversity extremely seriously. No food is allowed past the inspection station (we finished our last snack bars while walking up), and animals or seeds can result in massive fines, not to mention serious environmental consequences.

We zigzagged through the line and made our way to the window. After showing our permits and paying the national park fees, our bags were x-rayed and inspected. Quinn’s bag was taking a bit longer to clear, and it turned out the stuffed cuy he had been carrying everywhere with him since we picked it up in Otavalo looked suspiciously like a piece of fruit on X-ray. After a few laughs all around when we realized what they were looking for, we gathered our bags and made our way to the airport shuttle busses. All of the busses were going to the same place: a ferry station on the other side of the island.

There were no signs, no choices, no forks in the road. The island we landed on (Baltra) has no visitor sites and no tourist facilities. It’s an 8 square-mile semi-desolate patch of land know as “The Rock” by the US soldiers stationed there during World War II, when it served as an allied base defending western approaches to the Panama Canal. After the war, the US government turned the airbase over to the Ecuadorean government, which in turn converted the airstrip to a mixed use commercial and military airport. Other buildings were torn down to provide home building materials for the existing Galapagos residents, and it now serves as one of the two main visitor arrival sites to identify and isolate biodiversity threats before they can reach any of the more fertile islands in the archipelago.

The bus took us to a ferry station, which we boarded for the short journey across a narrow channel to the neighboring Santa Cruz Island.

Again, no signs, no choices, just mild wondering about whether we were going to the right place. But we had met the guide we knew would be waiting for us at the shuttle busses, and were happy to just go with the flow. The ferry ride itself was fun, and I was very pleasantly surprised that there were life jackets for everyone.

 

We pulled up to the dock at Santa Cruz and grabbed our bags from the roof of the ferry boat. From there, our guide ran off to grab his pickup truck parked nearby and we all hopped in for the drive to the other side of Santa Cruz.

We made some small talk with the guide/driver, but he was a man of few words. And to be honest, we didn’t mind the quiet drive. The scenery was beautiful, and we had spent the day traveling on nearly every mode of human transportation with two children. A moment of calm was not the worst thing at that point.

It turned out the break was especially nice, since our arrival at the third dock that day was a whirlwind. Our driver dropped us off at the boat we’d be spending the next four days in. The main guide from that crew let us know that we were going to see a tortoise sanctuary that day, but the entrance timing was very precise and the flight delays from the morning had thrown every tour’s plans into chaos. So we weren’t going to have lunch, or it was going to be a lunch on the way to the preserve, or the group already had lunch. It was all rather confusing, and we wanted to tell the direct-bordering-on-gruff guide we spoke Spanish, since that would at least take a language barrier out of the equation. But all of that melted away when we saw our first sea lion just hanging out on the dock.

But that was just the beginning. It turned out that the boat crew did actually prepare lunch for us (always a big relief for this family). After dropping our bags on the boat and having a nice little meal, we took a dinghy back to the dock and caught yet another bus to the tortoise sanctuary. 

The sanctuary was worth every bit of effort it took to get there. In fact, it was nothing short of magical. The creatures themselves are majestic. Weighing nearly 1,000 pounds and living well over 100 years, each tortoise is absolutely awe-inspiring. But taken collectively, they’re even more impressive. Their genetic history predates the formation the Galápagos Islands, and the first ones likely floated there through the ocean from related populations near Argentina about 5 million years ago (they can survive months without food or water). From there, sub-species populated the various other islands in the archipelago after each new island was formed via volcanic explosions. The species then diverged to meet the specific circumstances on each island, and those differences formed part of the reasoning behind Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Here’s his quote about this phenomenon.

I never dreamed that islands, about fifty or sixty miles apart, and most of them in sight of each other, formed of precisely the same rocks, placed under a quite similar climate, rising to a nearly equal height, would have been differently tenanted.

I agree, Mimi. It’s a lot to take in.

After the sanctuary, we headed back to the boat to start our journey. We pulled up to the dock, and our guide said that this would be our last developed environment for the rest of the trip. We were very excited about that part of it. To be honest, seeing any human activity on the Galápagos Islands was pretty jarring. But we still had about an hour in town for people to run any last minute errands. Food was provided on the boat, but they’ve never had our family on the boat before. So out of an abundance of caution, I grabbed a shopping bag full of emergency snacks from a nearby market. Plus a bottle of wine and a couple of cold beers. You never know. 

We took our last dinghy ride of the day back to our boat and checked out our new surroundings. 

But it wasn’t a long exploration. After a lovely dinner with the three other families traveling with us (one each from Switzerland, China, and the Netherlands), we were absolutely wiped out. I think Quinn’s face here pretty accurately captures the exhaustion we were all feeling, the other three of us are just marginally better at hiding it.

But new experiences are a powerful stimulant, and the kids wanted to stay up until we were underway. However, the crew said that we wouldn’t be heading off to the next island until around midnight, so Mimi read us all some bedtime stories and we called it a night.

This post should have ended there. But at some point in the middle of the night, I woke up to the feeling of us skipping along through the waves. It was exciting, and to this desert dweller, a bit terrifying. So I managed to convince myself that I heard Quinn crying, and figured that he fell off his top bunk and was now wandering a strange ship in the middle of the night. So I popped out of bed and took a moment to steady my sea legs. Then I went across the hall to the kids’ berth, and found them both sleeping soundly. But ironically, me entering actually woke Quinn up. Realizing the same thing I did a few moments ago, Quinn popped out of bed to look out his window. “Dad! We’re really moving! This is exciting!” I couldn’t agree more, Quinn. Also, night night.