Puerto Ayora, Ecuador (Galapagos)

Tuesday, November 23, 2004:

1. Galapagos No Go

I was supposed to fly back to Quito today as part of my long-delayed plan to head south toward Peru and finally, after several brief stops, ESCAPE FROM ECUADOR: THE COUNTRY THAT ATE MY SOUTH AMERICA TRIP (Note: I hold all rights to the future film). It didn´t happen. Blame the diving. Blame the landscape. Blame the cute but rancid baby sea lion pups. The point is --- as it has often been before --- blame anyone or anything but me. I was powerless to resist these enticements and changed my departure ticket for today at the TAME office on Monday evening, the idea being to hang out for a few more days and, of course, do more diving, landscape viewing and rancid baby sea lion pup smelling.

Today is a needed day off anyway. I´m heading over to Tortuga Bay, a 2 mile walk from Puerto Ayora, where there is, supposedly, a protected beach with mangroves where you can snorkel and swim. After that, the plan is to book dives for the next couple of days. Many of the shops are not sure of their plans for the next day until late in the afternoon (it depends upon the interest expressed by various groups of people dropping in throughout the course of the day) and this can lead to a lot of running around and comparing itineraries at 6 PM before the shops close up around about 7.

I also am taking it easy because I am, once more, disgustingly and rather shamefully chuchaqui (see post 13 for a translation if you still need one by the end of the paragraph). Eight or more caiprihnias (kind of like mint-free Mojitos) being to blame for that. My drinking accomplice isn´t faring much better this morning, though she is blissfully reminiscing over the moment in which she stood up on top of the bar and bonked an obnoxious couple from Miami on the head in a rain of furious little blows with the pair of Moroccas the barman lent her (to his eventual regret). The sound of the Moroccas on the Miami noggins were not unlike the sound a set of bongos make. Hence, today, two rough and beaten gringos staggering about the town, alternatively clutching their heads in pain and then giggling:

"Heh, heh, I bongoed them on the heads!"

"Heh, heh, (oww, my goddamned freaking head), you bongoed them on the heads!"

Smell the culturally enriched lifestyle I now lead. Savor the worldy, refined aromas.

2. Laura, Laura, Delicate-Little-Flower-Laura

Of course, at this point I need to mention that I am now temporarily joined in my escapades by my newfound British Traveling Pal, Laura. If you´ve never had a British Traveling Pal before, I recommend that you go find yourself one, at least for a short portion of time, for the sheer amusement of learning new and interesting vocabulary (the trick being to abandon your British Traveling Pal at a pub or bus station before you find yourself riddled with all sorts of undesirable new affectations, such as drinking foofy amounts of tea and picking up so much new vocabulary that you find yourself flinging around expressions that nobody could possibly comprehend, yourself included). After about two weeks I have learned that words like "muppety," "frumpy" and "minger" can, for example, be combined into the ever-so-endearing personal description "why that frumpy, muppety minger!" Shake your finger at the offending person for maximum effect. Also, be drunk.

In a nutshell, this cross-Atlantic alliance was established on the last leg of our boat trip aboard the Free Enterprise together. After realizing that our itineraries into Peru were virtually identical --- and that, unlike some of the other passengers on the boat, we didn´t each want to strap the other down with chum and haul them overboard (at least not most of the time) --- a plan was formed. That plan involves heading down from Quito to Banos, from Banos to Cuenca, from Cuenca to the southern valley of Vilcabamba and, if nobody has strangled the other by this time, a straight 36-hour jaunt by bus to Lima together to fix that omission.

Anyway, suffice to say that certain people have a way of utterly defying summarization in short, paragraph-length blurbs and I find this to be very highly annoying and inconsiderate of them. Therefore, I will conclude instead with a brief list :

1. She is a Delicate Little Flower (and will remind you of such, should you chance to forget it);

2. She is dangerous with ethnic percussive instruments (see above);

3. She has a tendency to taunt endemic Galapagos wildlife. Sample:

Naturalist Tour Guide, to group during tour of a beach on Floreana Island: "This male bullseal is sitting here on this beach alone because it lost a fight with the dominant male over the females and had to leave the colony." (I paraphrase slightly because the Guide spoke horrifically bad English, though he was billed by the tour agency as being fluent)

Laura, to disconsolate, mopy-looking sea lion: "Loser!" (No paraphrasing)

Sarcasm aside, Laura is a lot of fun and should not kill me while I sleep the evening after reading this.