| The Galapagos Islands are six hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean. You look down from the plane to see the tiny island of Baltra, not much more than an airstrip with a small wooden building. The passengers disembark and you are instructed to get aboard a bus. You ride to the edge of land. There is nothing there. Barren. You are told to get off the bus. Then a ferryman appears and tells everyone to get on. People are dressed in all manners -- some women are wearing high heels and dresses, men in suits, some passengers look like scruffy hippies. Each of you carries his own baggage: suitcases, duffel bags, fishnet sacks. One thing you all have in common -- a perplexed, lost, worried look. There is no one in charge. You seem to be at the mercy of the "Wind"* in this desolate place. It's a short ride, then you're herded off the ferry. The ferryman leaves. Where are they? Where should you go? There is no town, no building, no conveyances. Is this some cruel joke? Have you paid money to be deposited, stranded on this windblown, uninhabited island? People stand in clumps or solitarily. They don't talk much. No one has any answers. Only the children are oblivious. They run up and slide down the rocky hills. Their parents admonish them to stay out of the bushes. No one, no one at all. Just forty or so tourists left to die on a desert island. No one dares speak of this inner fear, but it is there. Then out of nowhere, no one hears or sees it because of the bushes, appears a covered pickup truck. It screeches and slides on the loose dirt. Then a car, then a station wagon, a convoy of vehicles appears. One by one, each driver calls a handful of names. The people are sorted out and docilely get in. The driver of the pickup lets down the tailgate and helps the agile and not so agile into the back of the truck. There are no windows, except behind the driver. The occupants sit staring at each other, saying little. Your baggage is jammed in the middle of the floor. You have no place to put your feet. "I'll let the tarp down," says the driver in Spanish, "It'll probably rain on the way there." On the way to where? How far is it? No one knows. It's hot in the truck with the tarp down. One of the passengers ties it up halfway. The air blows in -- and the dirt. The road is unpaved and bumpy, tortuous at times. There is little to hold on to in the truck. You are bounced and banged against each other. Heads bang against the side of the truck. Bottoms bounce off the hard wooden benches and bang down again. Occasionally someone falls off the bench. Then the rain comes. Mud blows in. It has gone from stuffy and hot to cold and wet. You let down the tarp. The smell of anxious, tired bodies fills the dim space. This goes on for two hours. Then the truck slows down and screeches to a stop. You all look at each other. The driver opens the tarp, lets down the tailgate -- "We're here!" he helps each of you as you crawl and fall ungracefully out of the truck. You crawl over the baggage and out of the back of the truck. He helps you as you jump down. Your legs feel like jelly. You smile as you look around. It's lovely. You're in a village. You see grey unpainted wooden houses facing onto dirt paths. There are leaning wooden fences, flowers and greenery. It's a place where someone cares, a community. You're on Santa Cruz Island. The next day your guide takes you and your party to meet a two hundred year old tortoise in the reserve that lets you sit on his back and stroke his eighteen-inch-long neck. Tortoises like to be petted too. But on another occasion as you ride through the moss-draped branches of the jungle on horseback, your way is barred by one of the giants. He hisses and lowers his head into his shell. In the silence it sounds like a growl. You have difficulty coaxing your horse around him. One day you and your friends go to Plaza Island to see the California sea lions. Four of you stand in single file on a narrow pier waiting for your guide to tie up the dinghy. Barbara who is nearly six feet tall stands at the front of the line, then little Eda, then you, and behind you standing at the end of the short pier is sixty-year-old Mrs. Mejonne with her arm in a cast. You are all fascinated by the hordes of sea lions on the beach, the first time you've seen them in the wild. You are a little fearful of invading their territory. They are bigger than you imagined. Suddenly a big bull stands up on his hind flippers and challenges Barbara. All her intelligence and worldliness deserts her and she STEPS BACK. Of course, Eda steps back. You're standing like dominos. You think, I can't step back, Mrs. Mejonne will fall into the sea. You shout, "Don't step back!" But Barbara is paralyzed. Then you amaze yourself because you're afraid of heights. You inch way around Eda and Barbara to the front of the line and wave your arms and shout, "Get out of here!" to the bull who immediately bows and waddles away. "How could you do that?" asks Barbara. "I have no fear of animals -- only of heights and my vision of Mrs. Mejonne sinking with her cast." Plaza Island is rocky with sparse dry vegetation. A land iguana sits in the sun by a dead tree. He blends with the browns and greys of the terrain. His fierce old face says that he has been here for thousands of years. The miniature dinosaur holds his ground as you walk slowly up to him, crouch down and touch his back. You caress it for several seconds before his fear grows and he scoots away. He feels as old as he looks. You feel as if your fingers have touched the ancient past. The next day you don't go out with the tour. You need time alone. You stay on Santa Cruz Island. You find a place to sit on the shore amid piles of black volcanic rocks. The ocean comes up and kisses the rocks gently. White coral dropped here and there decorates the rocky beach. You are in the company of black marine iguanas. They sit nearby sunbathing and spitting. A black crab crawls near to see what he's missing. A finch, the same off-black as the rocks, iguanas and crabs, hops over to satisfy his curiosity about you and the iguanas. He calls his friends who come to populate the bushes nearby. All the time the waves roar, shouting the same as they do on any rocky beach. You get up and walk over to the pier and sit on the warm wooden planks to watch the men load a boat. There on the pier the black iguanas languish all around, close to the supplies being loaded, against trash cans, like piles of black tar, unafraid, undisturbed by the work and action of the humans. On the ground they are so awkward, yet swimming they are as graceful as mermaids. To you they are ugly, but to each other they are incredibly beautiful as they snuggle close together -- one reaching an arm over the other's neck -- just the way beautiful people do. After lunch you sit by the hotel's private lagoon watching an iguana swim in for lunch. A lizard suns himself on a rock at your feet. The lava gulls giggle in the bushes. Two pelicans and a great heron saunter up into the patio, as close as a neighbor's dog. The dream-like setting is scored by the mournful sound of an oboe-like instrument playing Andean melodies on a radio in a restaurant nearby. The perfume of the salty air fills your head and soothes your mind. When you are again a city dweller, you will rarely see anything wild, except the hummingbirds that come to your window. But in summer when the lizards come onto your walk to sun themselves, then you'll remember friends you met on the equator, and in your mind's ear you'll hear the lava gulls laughing. ***** |
| VACATION #13 REMEMBERING FRIENDS IN THE GALAPAGOS |