Wild thing. Galapagos Islands, Ecuador (December 1999)

by Linda I'rahni

There are times when I'm struck at how monotonous I can let my life become. I'm doing fine and then out of the blue it hits. I don't think I can survive behind a desk for one more year, one more month, one more day. I stop reading the paper because it's the same old news, stop watching TV because it's the same old plots, and worst of all, ditch my fitness routine because it, too, is the same old same old. When it gets this bad, there's only one solution, and that's a change of scenery. Last January, 1 took that impulse to its extreme conclusion. With my good friend, Barb, who was feeling the same way, I boarded a ship bound for the Galapagos islands. Located in the Pacific Ocean on the equator, some 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, the Galapagos are comprised of a cluster of dormant and active volcanoes. The ocean here is deep, some 3,000 meters at its bottommost point. While most of the older volcanoes are completely submerged under the water, the top-third of the newer ones make up a chain of 18 islands and numerous smaller islets. Although most are uninhabited, there are a sprinkling of villages on a few of the islands.
The best—really only—way to visit the Galapagos is on a luxury vessel. Barb and I chose the Galapagos Explorer II. Managed by Canodros S.A., a group of South American ecologists, its mission is to not only provide environmentally safe travel, but to do it in the most comfortable way possible. During the day, the ship's passengers are divided into groups named in honor of the area's birds: albatrosses, cormorants, and boobies. Each group is assigned to Galapagos park rangers who take you from the ship to the islands via pangas, which are small motorized boats. The rangers give lectures on what you're seeing, plus tidbits about former residents, including Charles Darwin, who came to prove his theory of evolution by studying Galapagos finches,
The islands are arid and beautiful ;
I imagine Arizona looked like this before the oceans receded millions of years ago. Walks there are perfect for beginners even in the hilly inland areas where Barb and I walked among cactus plants, holly stick trees, and mangroves. We enjoyed barefoot excursions over powdery sand beaches as we tracked down the locals: indigenous birds, sea mammals, and reptiles. Completing the citizenry arc the relatives of creatures who had been displaced here by the ancient mariners: feral goals, pigs, donkeys, and cats. Sadly, they now carry a price tag on their heads, a result of their voracious appetites and healthy breeding.
My shipmates seemed enthralled by the natural history lectures, but I found myself tuning into nature and tuning out everything else. On the island of Fernandina, for instance, I was spellbound by a traffic jam of grinning iguanas; on Isla Lobos, I fixated on a thicket of nestling male frigates. Each island offers up its own special diversions: At San Cristobal's Ochoa Beach, it's the sleeping sea lions and roaming pelicans; on Bartolome it's the tiny lizards and deep red. Sally Lightfoot crabs; on James Island, I full in love with the sea lion pups and enormous sea turtles. Along the cliffs of Isabela, I encountered penguins—hundreds of them—and on Espanola, I spotted a yellow-crowned night heron, and passed by enormous flocks of masked and blue-footed boobies. I even got a hearty greeting there by some Galapagos mockingbirds that clowned around atop our heads, shoulders, and arms.
Snorkeling off the island of Rabida, I floated above a sandy floor dotted with spiny sea urchins. A black torpedo cut effortlessly toward me—a sea lion, who, after stopping to scratch an itch with her fin, was off in a swoosh. "Look! Look! You've go: to see this," exclaimed Barb, tugging at my arm. "If you're talking about the sea lion, I saw her," I said. "No, look!" she yelled. Planting my face mask in the water, I was just in time to glimpse a man's bottom in a psychedelic Speedo as a local swimmer shot beneath us. "Amazing!" my friend yelled, laughing so hard that I thought she'd surely drown. You might say that I had found my wild thing that day, and Barb had found hers.