I'm sitting here, pug in my lap, a not-too-bad 37 degrees outside in New York City, sipping some Oban, and finding it hard to believe I was in the Galápagos last week. It's amazing how you can look forward to something for months—we had this trip planned for like a year—and once it's over, it's gone. Of course, people keep asking, "How was it?" I don't have a pat answer yet, and I'm not sure I will. At times it was magical; at other times it was sort of underwhelming. I'm not sure I've ever had such a reaction to a place—it's not quite ambivalence, it's more that I'm not sure I ever really got to know it, at least on my terms.
And yet, yesterday I went back and looked at our photos and was tickled by so many moments. I think that may be the key point here: How many trips can you summarize in a few sentences? The details are what matter. So here are my favorite moments from the Galápagos (and Quito), in no particular order. Wait, scratch that: Let's make it a countdown!
10. The first afternoon in Galápagos, we went to a pond where flamingoes are known to hang out. I saw flamingoes years ago, in Chile, but from a distance. These were right in front of us, pink as cotton candy, twisting their necks into pretzels, fluffing their tailfeathers like they were in the Folies Bergère, altogether ignoring their audience. A magical start that nearly got lost in the cavalcade of magical moments—so much so that even toward the end of the trip, when we would compare notes with our fellow passengers about highlights, someone would say, "Wait, remember the flamingoes?" It felt like an eternity ago, even then.
9. Adam and I traveled with our friend Barry, with whom we had only traveled once (just the three of us). We all had a blast, and I can say with conviction that having Barry there absolutely made for a better trip. (Interestingly, right when I was most concerned that I was somehow bringing him down—I teased him more than I should have for reading young adult novels—he turned to me and said, "I think we're traveling really well together.") I'd say that by day two everyone on the ship knew Barry; he worked it. My favorite Barry moment came when he decided that we needed to play a game called Celebrity, which is sort of like Password with famous names. I have never in my life seen someone get so excited—Barry would holler, shriek, yell, growl.... He put on a hell of a show. My second favorite moment was when, while we were walking across some rippled lava stone, I said, "You do realize you're walking on a giant black man's scrotum," which made him guffaw right when everyone else was having solemn thoughts about seabirds or something.
8. I must've told ten people on the ship how entranced I was by the redness of the sand at one of the beaches we landed on. I wanted to eat it. I still do!
7. The land turtles are the big stars of the Galápagos—at the Charles Darwin Research Station in Puerto Ayora, a stop on everyone's itinerary, you get to stand next to them and have your photo taken. And they're extraordinary! But they don't have a ton of personality. The marine iguanas, in comparison, which were everywhere—sunning themselves, clinging to rocks, occasionally fighting or humping—were like bikers left too long in Twentynine Palms. I took so many iguana pictures. When they get annoyed with you for getting too close, they nod vigorously—"like they have Parkinson's," said another passenger. Once, when Adam and I kayaked right up to the rock where a really big, old iguana sat with his harem of 20 or so females, all of whom were facing the sun, like Muslims praying to Mecca, the old man nodded with such aggression that it reminded me of Jack Palance doing push-ups at the Oscars. P.S. This trip has finally inspired me to get new prescription sunglasses after 17 years. They're awful.
6. The first morning, I woke up, saw that my phone said 6:35, and told Adam we might as well get up because the mandatory wake-up announcement was in 10 minutes. I went and got coffee for us—that's what I do when we travel—and when I returned to the room, he said, "Did you ever change your phone's clock back an hour?" Um, no. We went up to the top deck and drank our coffee, and it was so lovely. Every morning we did the same thing, and it was a daily highlight. The sunrises were pretty if not spectacular; what was special was being alone (but not inside the cabin, which was so-so). The ship would rock a bit, we'd drink coffee from the old-fangled machine in what I called the lobby. (I learned at some point to push "coffee with milk" once and then "espresso"; the result was what I called a coffee doughnut—sweet but it did the job.) Midway through the trip others began to join us, which was fine, but not quite the same as that first morning.
5. We were in Quito for New Year's Eve. I had resisted it during the trip planning, but there was no way around it—you want to get to the country far enough in advance because if you miss the ship, you're up the creek. New Year's Eve didn't bother me as much as New Year's Day—and sure enough, nothing was open that day. (On the other hand, locals were strolling everywhere, which gave the streets a festive air.) Anyway, we learned that on New Year's Eve day, Ecuadoreans (a) light a lot of firecrackers, all day long; (b) burn effigies right on the sidewalk and street, from the afternoon on; and (c) wear masks—kids wear cute plastic ones, while men wear papier mâché ones and wigs, and then they run up to everyone asking for money which they use to buy alcohol. Adam went off on his own on New Year's Eve afternoon, and he reported that his taxi got stopped by locals drawing a rope across the street so that a bewigged man could demand money from each car. Barry and I went to Avenida Amazonas, where we heard the big New Year's party would be. Things were beginning to hop as early as 2:30 p.m., when we were there, but it came off a little like a glorified New York street fair. (I never felt claustrophobic because I could see over everyone—Ecuadoreans aren't tall.) We bought papier mâché masks from a vendor. She wanted me to get a Michael Jackson one, but he was never my cup of tea (or should I say Pepsi can filled with wine). Instead, I got one that I think is supposed to be Liza Minnelli. Barry bought a clown. And for Adam I chose a mask that had cheeks that reminded me of his. And then I took a variation of the photo I take of him every time we got on a trip—instead of him lounging in his hotel robe, however, he was lounging in a hotel robe and mask.
4. On our last full day, on the way back from the afternoon excursion, our Zodiac boat (which the crew either called a panga or a dinghy, but they'd say deen-ghee, which always made me giggle) stopped and watched as a flock of storm petrels walked atop the swells, looking for food. We had been told earlier that the birds are named after St. Peter because they walk on water–I have no idea if Peter walked on water, and I don't give a crap—but the birds were breathtaking, poetic. I can't really describe them. I'm just hoping that one of the other passengers sends me the photo he took. (I had put our camera away, and we may have been trying to save battery life because we forgot to bring the charger and were dependent on another passenger's kindness, and who likes that?)
3. Sea lions are pretty much everywhere in the Galápagos, and they're adorable. They loll on the beach, often looking up at you, batting their eyelashes. They lie in rows or atop each other; they roll around in the surf. They swam around our kayaks, intrigued by whatever it was we were doing. They have no fear of us, and if they smell—and they do—it didn't keep us away because, seriously, they rival pugs when it comes to sheer lovability. One day, we were snorkeling when a sea lion came up to me. The animals' eyes change when they're underwater—some kind of lid comes down—giving them a Mr. Magoo (with his glasses) look. It dove so I did; it did a twirl so I did. We played. In and of itself, this would've made my top moments, but it's particularly precious to me because the moment was mine and mine alone. Which gets to my key disappointment with the Galápagos: You never go anywhere on your own; you never go anywhere off-trail; you're never without a guide. I understand that that's how it has to be, or otherwise the islands would get ruined. But one of the things I've learned over the years is that when I travel I need to feel like I'm exploring, like I'm discovering something. It's why I usually don't do a ton of research about a place—I don't want to know everything before I go. In the Galápagos, you get the feeling that there's no photo that hasn't been taken, no animal interaction that hasn't been had; there's not much room for spontaneity. It's a wonderful, fascinating place, but in this one way, it can also be a little unsatisfying to visit. And so, for me, snorkeling was the best part of the trip, if only because it was easier to pretend I was having my own experience. I often stayed a little away from the group, and if I didn't see what they saw, I saw what I saw—penguins zooming by, a school of relatively massive pufferfish, a goofball of a sea lion.
2. The last night of our trip, Barry, Adam, and I had dinner at a restaurant in Quito. The food was rather good, but the restaurant was empty. We were all pretty tired from a long day of travel, and Barry in particular was feeling the altitude. And yet we all snapped awake when the waitress, at the end of reciting the specials, said, "And we have the octopussy, grilled with [blah blah blah]." At the time, we managed not to titter—though I do recall a collective intake of breath—but the next day, on one of our flights, I brought it up, and we laughed and laughed. I love that stuff: It's not why we went to Ecuador, but in some ways it's the kind of thing I'm likely to remember forever. If that makes me a philistine, well, I'd rather be a philistine with a smile on my face than another grim saint.
1. While we were at the Charles Darwin Research Station—that detail is important—our guide for the morning, David, was going on about this and that. David is a sweet guy, but his English wasn't the best, which wouldn't have been nearly as much of a problem if he wasn't afflicted with speaker's syndrome (you know: when people who are talking to a group talk in a flat, boring way that's not like how they normally speak). And it was hot. The three of us were sort of not listening when someone else asked something about evolution. All I remember is that David was talking about the primordial soup—he didn't use that phrase, it was probably too vivid—and he said, "Personally, I just don't really believe that human beings evolved from worms." How on earth does someone become a guide in the Galápagos if they don't believe in the key tenet of evolution? This should be my least favorite moment, but on the other hand, there was something delightful about it—not everyone gets a Galápagos guide who doesn't believe in evolution. I felt special. P.S. I have a photo of David from right near that moment, but here's a nazca booby instead. As the t-shirts say, I ♥ boobies!