Oh Hey, from somewhat real-time-ish! Galapagos days 1-3 are on hold until Kevin transfers and edits all of our cool pics of Waved Albatross, me and my sea lion buddies, and boatloads of Marine Iguanas, so today’s post catches up on civilized island life in the Galapagos.
We began Day 1 of our Galápagos trip exploring Puerto Ayora, the main port city in Santa Cruz (and the biggest port city in all of the Galapagos), and we closed it out on Day 5 in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, the main port city in San Cristobal (and 2nd biggest in all of Galápagos). I spend a good deal of my island travels deciding which one I shall live on when I become old and mysteriously rich, and these two officially take the cake.
Imagine an island town that embraces tourists, but doesn’t have too many of them. The city is neat as a pin, and everyone recycles. Your biggest stressor is remembering to throw the toilet paper in the waste bin and not in the loo, because The Environment. Tiny tiendas and unobtrusive souvenir shops alternate up and down the main drag, and they all boast mini-fridges full of Gatorade and cold beer that you are free to drink whilst strolling up and down the streets. There are colorful City Name signs at the port that you magically don’t feel touristy taking touristy photos in front of, and there’s creep aplenty of the amazing wildlife you’ve just spent the past 4 days with – sea lions taking snoozes on pier benches, yellow finches landing on your heels while you eat lunch, and marine iguanas sneezing on the ropes of the seaport fence posts. The sunsets are perfect.
If you’ve been imagining along, welcome to the Galápagos port cities. Puerto Ayorta and Puerto Baquerizo Moreno are enchanting, spotless, and up to the task of living out your dreams of the ideal island town.
We spent less time in the former, as we only had a few hours on and off the boat to explore, but serendipitous timing afforded us a front-row view of a local tournament for a beach volleyball-type sport that featured much higher nets and a curious allowance for ball carries whenever anyone wanted. We didn’t catch who won but there was lots of delightful cursing and angry finger pointing on the court when teammates missed balls, and it reminded me of my own overly competitive BB League team back home. We watched the game on a Thursday, no less – the weekly date of our bad BB league back home. ‘Twas fate.
The highlight of Puerto Ayorta was the first of our sea lion experiences and was an epic opening number; there is nothing like happening upon a giant sea lion snoozing across an entire park bench (meant for people) and angrily barking at any idiot tourist who fancied getting an up close and personal pic with said sea lion by trying to sit next to him. I am Satan and laughed at the twenty-something who actually got nipped by the sea lion as fair punishment for 6x more than invading the universal Galapagañan fair space rule.
I am also an unnaturally sensitive payer-of-attention to local markets and convenience store fare whereever I travel, and I must say that Puerto Ayora’s main grocery now ranks in the top echelons of my list. Nothing like hand-crafted signs pointing out the bug bite cream, two artisanal-carpentry wooden floors of consumer goods displays, New Order on the radio, and 60-cent “grab your own chocolate croissants that we just baked 15 seconds ago!” to get me going. Grocery stores hold a weirdly skewed weight in my fantasy determination of where I want to live when I’m old and fancy, and this place has made an impact is all I’ll say.
In contrast to the excitement of arriving in our first official Galápagos city, the pleasant resolution of our last pre-flight overnight in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno was more of a warm, sunset-drenched sendoff. Kevin caught something weird and slept most of the day, but if you’re going to sleep for most of the day, it might as well be in a politely-staffed, well air-conditioned interior room with low light and unlimited bottled water. He got up in time for us to catch a beautifully unfiltered sunset off the pier, and I continued on into the night for a last meal with our lovely friends from the Archipell I, Hendrick and Gertraud of Munich, Germany, for spaghetti and fried wahoo steak (what is this place it’s heaven) before going our separate ways promising to meet up for Oktoberfest in September.
The airport for this morning’s flight was literally walkable from our hotel, and after checking our bags in we had an entire hour to hike back into town and catch the first and only to-the-humiliation alpha male sea lion fight of our trip. And it all happened at 8:30 a.m. right in the sleepy little port bay while we drank some coffee and thought about ways to pretend we didn’t live in Denver and we have always had a house here and we were just staying. Some aggro Man Lion full-on challenged the local colony Alpha male for total colony domination, and after lots of barking at each other from about 3 inches away (similar to what you see at the Ginn Mill on any given evening), we got to watch Incumbent Alpha Male crank the shizz out of Challenger Male and bite and chase him until he was literally leaping out to sea. Nature, man. It was a perfect close out to our amazing port stop, and my only regret from the entire trip is not purchasing that neon yellow one-size-fits-all Galápagos muscle tee with a realistic graphic screen print of a sea lion wearing sunglasses.
Our flight is heading for wheels up – so ciao for now – Cuenca to come and more Galapagos stories to follow!