I love to travel. There is nothing quite like the feeling of seeing a new place for the very first time, of opening my eyes again and again and again and not knowing what to expect, not knowing what will come next, not knowing what beauty will astound me or what unforeseen obstacle will present itself tomorrow.
I have a long travel-based Bucket List. Intimidatingly long. There are just so many beautiful places in the world that I want to see for myself: Peru, Kenya, Madagascar, Shangri La, Burma, Vietnam, Bolivia, it's endless.
I've done many road trips around the United States and Canada before. These trips are epic tests of endurance, spontaneity, fate and wonderment. They usually include a rental car and not a single planned place to stay, but about 10-20 different spots that I.must.see, come hell or high water. They are not for the faint of heart. But I'd never actually traveled outside of the United States before. We didn't grow up traveling, that's for sure. We didn't have much money, my mom is terrified of planes and hates driving and my dad would rather never leave the farm house he grew up in; he still lives there to this day. He's so against traveling that In the 12 years I've lived in Texas, he has not once thought about coming down here to visit. (My little sister got him to go to Disney World one time.)
So I don't know where I got this bug from. But I have it. I've always had it, and I never really knew what to do with it, or how to do it. I didn't learn to travel from anyone. It wasn't part of my education, my heritage, my upbringing. It wasn't even part of my stratosphere.
Worry is a hard habit to break when you grow up the way I grew up, the way many of us grow up. I'd been taught to always think long-term, to set my sights on goals long into the future and to work, work, work. The only "present" that existed was the one that got me to tomorrow. I started working on my writing career in junior high, when I dropped all my art lessons because my dad told me that no one really becomes an artist when they grow up. In high school, it was all about getting into my dad's alma mater. In college, everything I did was about getting a job after college. And before I knew it, I'd spent 30 years of my life planning on traveling in the future but making excuses for not traveling in the present. It started with not having enough time and money. Then it was not having the time. Or I'd tell myself it was unsafe to go somewhere foreign alone. When I worked past that, then I couldn't make up my mind about where to go. What if something bad happened after and this was the only trip I'd take for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years? It had to be the right trip. When I'd finally settle on some place, I'd be worried about not having enough savings again. And then time. And then safety. It was this endless cycle of worry perpetuated by every challenging thing that happened. I lost my house in a natural disaster. I rebuilt my house. Then I got brave quit my long-time job to focus on new career aspirations. Then I lost my house again in another natural disaster. It seemed like my worries over security and savings would never go away.
The second time I lost my house, though, something in me either broke, or clicked. I realized I could easily spend my entire life worrying about the future, and that something would always happen that would validate my fears. And if I lived like that, I would never actually live in the present. Or I could just accept the fact that life is completely uncontrollable and say, you know what, things will still somehow be okay if I live right here, right now, and no matter what happens tomorrow, I will find a way, again. And so I finally did the thing I'd been wanting to do for so many years, and yet had been so hesitant to do: I decided to book my first inter-continental trip.
So all this is to say, this was a Big Deal to me. I didn't know where I was going, exactly, but I knew I was going. Of course, being the budgeter that I am, I had to do it my way: cheaply. I began looking up plane tickets via Google, which helpfully lets you know how much it costs to fly from one city to another. It turns out, Quito, Ecuador is one of the cheapest cities in the world to fly to from Austin, and it's also the gateway to the Galapagos, a group of islands made famous by Charles Darwin for their amazingly unique wildlife. As an animal lover, a nature lover and a photographer, the Galapagos was definitely one of my Bucket List trips.
I'd always been told that getting to the Galapagos was expensive, that it was too far outside of Central America to be worth the trip, or that it was too spread out to really see in just a few days. But what I realize now is that the people and sources telling me those things? They weren't me. It's true, Galapagos can be expensive. Most people book cruises to visit the Galapagos, and those cruises can last between 5-18 days and cost anywhere from $5,000-$18,000. I couldn't do that, so I decided to establish a homebase and book a hotel in Puerta Ayora on Isla Santa Cruz for the week instead; the total for airfare and hotel for 7 days was about $1,300 a person, plus the extra $126 in entrance fees and bus and ferry tickets that everyone to the Galapagos has to pay. Beyond that, the plan was to look and see where we could go and what we could do once we got to the island; I'd read that visitors could easily book discounted day trips to other islands from travel agents in town.
So my boyfriend and I flew to Quito. We went through customs for the first time. We got lost in the airport. I tried speaking Spanish a few times. It was an adventure, but we finally did make it to Isla Baltra by plane. That's the gateway to the Galapagos and to the National Park system there. There, we paid our $100 entrance fee and bought our $10 round trip bus pass and boarded a bus that would take us to a ferry that would lead us to a much more rickety bus that would carry us all the way across Isla Santa Cruz to Puerta Ayora, where we would hail a taxi and somehow navigate it to our hotel, Blue House Galapagos.
We spent the first day wandering around the streets of Puerta Ayora, getting our bearings. It's a small town with small colorful buildings, some worn with character and age and others gussied up for tourists and visitors. The port is beautiful, and we came across sea lions and lizards hanging out on various structures almost immediately. Most of the locals there do not speak much English, or their English was about as good as my Spanish. We tried telling our first taxi driver where to take us: Blue House Galapagos. He didn't know of it. "La Casa de Azul de Galapagos," I said, trying to help. It was a no-go. We got out our navigation for the address; Google claimed the streets in Puerto Ayora had numbers. "No," said the taxi driver. But he did recognize the map and we made it to our hotel, a small bed-and-breakfast. Our suite came with two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen.
It was not hard to find a place to book day trips from. In fact, it would have been much harder to not find a place to book day trips from. Everywhere you go, there are signs: San Cristobel! San Fernandino! Snorkeling! Diving! Sharks! We booked out trip by wandering into a brightly-colored red building on the corner about a block inland from the harbor park; the girl there spoke broken but convincing English. We told her we wanted to go snorkeling and see as many animals as possible in one day. She pointed to Los Tunnleles on the Isla Isabela map. "This, to me, is my favorite," she said, talking about blue-footed boobies, penguins, sea lions, sea turtles, pelicans, sharks, rays and other wildlife available on the adventure. "And then the next day, you see the vulcans." The two-day adventure was $265 a person, and I hesitated. She pointed to something cheaper, to Isla Santa Fe. "But no blue-footed boobies," she said, and thus, Isabela won — but we couldn't go until the third day, since the next day was booked up. Of course, she had a solution for that. "You can see giant tortoises, here" she said, and she booked us a trip to the Highlands.
So that's what we did our second day: We got into a taxi cab for a private tour of a giant tortoise sanctuary in the Highlands, the inland part of Isla Santa Cruz. These tortoises were not messing around. They are huge. And they are slow, lumbering, as though they are both ancient and yet still have all of time and will live forever. And they are muddy. And still, they seem sacred and peaceful. And this sanctuary was not a zoo. This was tortoises in their wild habitats, no chain linked fences, no glass, no barriers between us and them except the laws of the lands and the awe and respect one should automatically have when being invited into someone else's home: do no harm. We got close, but the guide got closer, picking up wild guava fruits and eating them off the trees. He gave us some, first to eat, and then to leave for the tortoises, who ate them like candy.
The next day, we woke up bright and early, ready for our excursion to Isla Isabela. Springing for this excursion might have been the best decision I've ever made. The trip started bright and early at 6:30 in the morning. Our job was to find Boat Luis, or Julian. We managed to do that by walking around the harbor and asking the locals "Donde esta Julian?" and "Sabe Julian?" (which is, sadly, about as good as my Spanish is nowadays) and somehow everyone knew who Julian was and where, and they pointed us down the harbor until finally a coffee vendor says "He's right there" and there is Julian. We did such a good job finding Julian that we were the first ones there and Julian put us on the first boat out, the Mi Sol.
I have to say, that boat ride was terrible. This was not a fun thing to do. It was the boat equivalent of an old school bus, basically, with people crammed shoulder to shoulder. When just five people tried to sit along the back of the boat, claiming no room was left, Julian shook his head in anger. "Six people here or we no leave!" he said, and he meant it. But the boat did get us to Isabela, after two grueling, stomach-churning hours.
I had no idea what was going to happen once we got to Puerta Villamil (the harbor in Isabela). Even though I speak a tiny bit of Spanish and the girl who sold us the trip spoke a little bit of English, there was still a language barrier so there hadn't been a lot of explanation. "No worry," the girl had laughed. "Everything good." And everything was good, as there was a girl at the Isabela harbor with a sign bearing our names, so we went up to her and she took us to a taxi and rode with us to the hostel where we'd be staying for the night. There was a hammock area and an outdoor TV to watch soccer on and a winding staircase and we had our own room.
We were told our snorkeling adventure would start at 11, so we got ready and met another taxi driver, who took us to the snorkeling company, Isabela Dive Center, to get our fins. He then drove us back to the harbor, and we followed him down the pier until we got on another boat, a smaller speed boat with only six of us on it (plus two captains and the guide).
The sights we saw just getting to the snorkeling were incredible. We first went around this small, magical island, just the tip of a rock protruding out from the ocean, the side of it looking a bit like a human skull. There were birds all around it and some sea lions and the waves would wash over it, sending waterfalls down the sides, then it'd dry up again, then the waves would crash again and the waterfalls would start again, just this perfect scene happening over and over and over again.
Eventually, we slowed the boat down as we neared Los Tunneles, a cluster of lava tunnels protruding out into the clear ocean waters along the side of Isla Isabela. There, we were able to walk around this incredible deserted land of nothing but these prickly pear-like cactus trees and beautiful blue-footed boobies, which can only be found on the Galapagos Islands. The boobies, known for their wobbly dances, strong loyal life-long partnerships and unique bird calls, let us come right up to them and take their picture. Unfortunately, as incredible as the blue-footed boobies are, their populations are declining because of a lack of sardines in the area. Hopefully, measures taken by the Ecuadorian government to increase conservation measures in the Archipelago will help; in 2008, Ecuador became the first country in the world to give Nature constitutional rights. The Rights of Nature state that "nature in all its life forms has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles" and that "we — the people — have the legal authority to enforce these right son behalf of ecosystems." It even gives Nature the right to be named as the defendant in a lawsuit.
I really thought that was great enough, but then the guide made us leave to continue on, so I did. We got back in the boat for about 10 minutes, and then he had us jump into the water to get up close to some penguins — they were adorable — for about three minutes before we got back in the boat again to go to another area. There, we got in the water and it was just like some kind of strange ocean swim race. The water was cold, and I was glad to have a wetsuit. I was also glad to have a life vest, as this was not your grandmother's snorkeling where you just stay in the same place and take in your surroundings. No, this was a snorkeling tour of sea creature homes. We started off near a sea turtle village. The guide would be like "follow me!" and we'd all try to keep up. He'd see a sea turtle and we'd all swim with the sea turtle for a bit, then he'd be like, come, come, follow me! until we saw another sea turtle and we'd swim with it for a bit and then the guide would be like "hurry, hurry, follow me!" and it was exhausting but amazing. Those sea turtles are huge and it's incredible how graceful everything in the ocean is.
I had a really hard time keeping up, but we swam for quite a bit. Our guide took us to a shark cave (for real). I was right behind him and he didn't tell us where we were going, so I saw a shark and screamed under water and the shark got scared and swam away and the guide was a little annoyed by that, but we still found all the sharks and spent a lot of time with them. (Reef sharks are shy but friendly sharks.) Then the guide said "hurry, follow me!" again and we found a sea lion that came right up to us and swam with us. The sea lion was also teasing a school of tiny fish that were right there, so I got to see the school do that thing where they all swim together and burst apart and swim together and burst apart, all while the sea lion was there doing underwater flips and rolls and swimming around us. Those guys have remarkable senses of humors. Eventually, the sea lion left and the guide found a sea horse for us, and then as we were making our way back to the boat, a family of golden rays swam up to us and we swam almost the whole way back to the boat with the golden rays.
Seriously. That was my day that day. Hours later, I could still feel the force of the current and the water moving my body as I tried to walk like I belonged on land.
The next day, after a grueling 8-mile hike to see the volcanos on Isabela — which, maybe thanks to the language barrier, I had thought would be more of a drive and less of a walk — we returned to Puerta Ayora and went right back to the red building where we'd booked the day trip to Isabela.
"We want to go snorkeling Santa Fe now," we said.