Cotopaxi
 Guayquil |
 San Cristobal from the air |
The harbor town outside the airport, Puerto Chino, was reminisent of towns in the Carribean; a few upscale places for tourists and a lot of seedy, run down not-much-of-anything in between. As it turned out, that wasn't the typical Galapagos town, and it didn't really matter; we were just passing through to the harbor to take a small inflated boat called a panga to the yacht that would be our home for the next eight days.
So, digressing for a moment, why is yacht spelled that way? I mean, you could go southern drawl like and instead of y'all say y'at, or you could go like "ought" so yought, but yacht seems like ya-chit, but there's no "ch" sound. So why put it there?
English is just a confusing language.
End of digression. So the harbor was interesting, or more accurately, the seals hanging around everywhere on the docks were interesting, and the harbor was attractive enough once you were far enought out that you couldn't see too much detail.
So, about the ya-cht, the Infinity, which per the literature is "one of the most luxurious and modern yachts in the archipelago." Having seen some of the other yatchs during our eight day period, I think you need to add "that are available for passengers," because there were some pretty damn awesome looking yatchs out there.
It had 11 cabins (one for the Captain), supporting 20 guests, with 11 crewmembers (including the captain), some of who might have slept in the Pangas. The food was great, which given the limitations they must have for cooking space and storage pushs the needle in the "amazing" category. There was a sun deck on top and a bar in the back (manned 7x24 by Eduardo, who made a mean Pisco Sour, and while I have no idea what a "Pisco" is it tasted pretty darn good). The bedroom was a lot more spacious than expected, and every one had a small balcony with a table and two chairs, which we typically used for drying laundry, which was the only shortcoming of the ship; they only did towels. To add a little insult to injury, the brochure said you should bring a small duffle, which pretty much everyone other than Alison and I ignored.
That was, of course, because we did that in Africa and, when you are flying in a bush plane that looks like a bottle of water is an unnecessary use of space, it's good advice. But, in Africa, pretty much any place you stayed DID LAUNDRY. So we used the sink and a lot of scrubbing to avoid having our boat-mates throw us overboard.
In the evenings, we would gather in the large combo meeting hall and dining room and go over the days adventures and plan for tomorrows; that was mostly seeing if it was wet landing (sandels), dry landing (hiking shoes or boots), or panga (swimsuits), with occasional beach-based snorkeling which required everything and meant that the super camera and telephoto lens had to stay on the boat.
And there were pretty awesome sunsets, and one sunrise, because we didn't get up early enough to see them until out last day.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
Having been introduced to this floating paradise of a boat, we immediately went to shore and drove across the island to visit the Centro De Crianza De Tortugas Terrestres David Rodriguez, aka the David Rodriguez Tortoise Breeding Center, a breeding center for (wait for it) the giant tortoises of San Cristóbal Island (Chelonoidis chathamensis). Not too surprisingly, it had a lot of tortoises, and more surprisingly, absolutely no mention of who "David Rodriquez" was.
We took many, many, many pictures of tortoises (this would become a recurring theme for the next week), but will spare you that and only show a few. Plus one shot of a mockingbird eating a pink hawkmoth.
 |
 |
 |
 |
Which ended day 1 ... followed shortly thereafter by DAY TWO