Voyage of the Eclipse

Having now returned from the Galapagos I realize I could have done the trip much more cheaply. It isn’t the kind of trip that needs business class seats and top accommodations. It was after all, an eco-tour.

Nevertheless, it was nice to start the journey in Quito at the Patio Andaluz. The former convent has been lovingly transformed into a first class hotel.

I won’t dwell much on my stay there as there is too much to cover about the islands and it’ll be hard enough to keep your attention. Two things about the city are worth mentioning. At an altitude of around 9000 feet or 3000 meters the city enjoys eternal fall weather. It was cool yet sunny during the day and chilly at night which is perfect for a guy like me that has too much insulation covering his bones.

The other item worth pointing out about Quito is the large collection of colonial Spanish architecture. I’m told that there are more buildings from the 1600s, built by Spain, than there are in Bogota but I have yet to go there and verify this fact. It’s a very nice city to stroll around in.

Before leaving we took a quick drive to the equator, or what they told us was the equator. I’m sure I’ve passed the imaginary line a hundred times in my travels but it was kind of cool to think you were standing on it.

One of the things which may or may not be true about the equator is that you are lighter when standing on the center of the earth. Well, as you can see in this picture this is either a fact or my eight year-old is going to have a future in women’s basketball.

Being in the globalization business, I couldn’t help but to ask our tour guide what the minimum wage in Ecuador was. His answer of $250 per month didn’t surprise me. What did was his added response that the president is trying to install a $4000 per month maximum wage. That’s such a socialist policy that it borderlines communism. Apparently, the president of Ecuador is good friends with the leader of Venezuela which explains a lot. I couldn’t help but think of a quote I had just read in The Voyage of the Beagle which was written all the way back in the 1830s.

Charles Darwin – “And when the old bloody-minded tyrant is gone to his long account, Paraguay will be torn by revolutions, violent in proportion to the previous unnatural calm. That country will have to learn, like every other South American state that a republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principals of justice and honour.”

I’ve enjoyed reading his journals. Some good parts are when he says something which must have been quite normal in the 1830s but seem rather ludicrous now.

Charles Darwin – “The second day after our return to the anchorage, a party of officers and myself went to ransack an old Indian grave, which I had found on the summit of a neighbouring hill. “

The best part of the entire book was, of course, where we can witness the birth of the theory of evolution. Years before he wrote his On the Origin of Species he writes about the Galapagos on page 400 of the copy I have, what you see in the paragraph below. It’s a bit long for a quote but worth reading.

Charles Darwin – “The natural history of these islands is eminently curious, and well deserves attention. Most of the organic productions are aboriginal creations, found nowhere else; there is even a difference between the inhabitants of the different islands; yet all show a marked relationship with those of America, though separated from that continent by an open space of ocean, between 500 and 600 miles in width. The archipelago is a little world within itself, or rather a satellite attached to America, whence it has derived a few stray colonists, and has received the general character of its indigenous productions. Considering the small size of the islands, we feel the more astonished at the number of their aboriginal beings, and at their confined range. Seeing every height crowned with its crater, and the boundaries of most of the lava streams still distinct, we are led to believe that within a period geologically recent the unbroken ocean was here spread out. Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact—that mystery of mysteries—the first appearance of new beings on this earth.”

 What everyone realizes when they set foot on the first island is that you can get incredibly close to the animals, reptiles and birds. You could literally poke them if your guide would let you. That’s really the best part. You are part of the eco-system while there. I swam  with sea lions, sea turtles and penguins. How cool is that?

You can sit there pondering all sorts of crazy thoughts. You’ve heard that the dinasours were both reptiles and birds, right? Why is it that all the endemic life on the Galapagos Islands are also reptiles and birds of all sorts? It seams to me to be a view of what the earth was once like. Recently cooled mounds of lava with reptiles and birds everywhere, etc… Anyway, you don’t think thoughts like that when you are sitting behind a computer launching websites.

The entire trip was really an incredible learning experience. I hope my kids can retain even a portion of it. Hell, I hope I can retain a portion of it. Before I left I thought blue footed boobies were something you saw on the French riviera. Well, maybe the Spanish riviera. I don’t think the Frenchies would wear Crocks.

Another thing you learn is that the world is a dangerous place. It’s an eat or be eaten world. You hear these stories about birds that have two eggs and the stronger of the chicks pushes the weaker one out off the cliff onto the rocks to die so he doesn’t have to compete over the food his mother is bringing. Or you watch baby sea lions starving to death on the beach because their mothers abandoned them and the guides do nothing about it because they can’t alter the eco-system. The humanity in you says, “well feed the damn thing” but you know they are right so you just shake you head and move along.

The birds in this picture have blue feet. I just thought that I’d point that out.

Would I recommend this trip? You bet I would. Take your mate, your kids or both. Learn to dive first if you don’t know how because the best stuff is all under the water.