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Family and Friends
Letters 2009.
December
2009
Dear Friends and Family,
If you want to build a building here,
particularly close to the coast you’ll
be dealing with huge lava boulders, some
two meters round. We lack available
heavy equipment, so we break them up
into manageable pieces with fire. You
get the boulder good and heated up with
a little bon fire or three on its sides,
takes the better part of a day, then you
dump cold water on it.
We had our
first big Turkey-day dinner/lunch in San
Cristobal this year last Saturday (no
holiday on Thanksgiving Thursday). There
are three of us gringos living here now,
one gal married a local guide and their
one year old
 daughter,
another gal working for the Charles
Darwin Foundation and myself.
Thanksgiving is a US holiday, but the
idea was received well. Imagine gringos,
of all people dedicating a day and a
meal simply to giving thanks. It was
news to a number of them, received with
wonder and a mild shaking of their
heads. Two turkeys raised in Ecuador,
stuffing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin
pie makings imported from the US, gravy,
mashed potatoes the real deal for thirty
people. We explained that besides giving
thanks, Thanksgiving is traditionally a
day spent with your family and that was
why we had invited all of them, our
family here on San Cristobal.
We
have a papaya tree that grew from seed
in our yard. We didn’t plant it. The
seed washed out with the grey water of
our kitchen sink and laundry that is
also watering a number of other plants.
In the volcanic soil we have here things
grow really fast if they have water. So
a year later we have a twenty foot tree
producing a papaya a day. Because of the
papaya tree and the fruit that we
sometimes miss harvesting daily we also
now have Galapagos Mocking Birds nesting
in our other trees. You can call them to
you with a squeegee sucking noise (my
best written word description). They’ll
land on the closest thing to you, my
wife if she is standing still enough.
They think you’re another bird out for
their territory. They’re sizing you up
for combat. My wife on the other hand
could be either the closest thing to me
or sizing me up for combat.
When
I was a kid growing up in Los Angeles
CA, we had “Blue Belly Swift Lizards”,
incredibly fast and paranoid. We learned
to sneak up on them and catch them by
hand. The equivalent here are Lava
Lizards, real fast and with an
extraordinary leaping ability (an eight
inch lizard can do a standing broad jump
of three feet), but they are not at all
paranoid. Our two year old son had been
busting his gut trying to catch one by
hand and I’m sure within a year or two
he will. What he has caught are scrapped
knees and one time a badly bruised
forehead tattooed by a lava boulder. So
I finally rigged up a “lizard catcher”
for him. He won’t need it in the future,
but I grew tired of watching him
frustrated and blood stained. A “lizard
catcher” is a long stick with a slip
knot noose made of fishing line at its
tip. Just angle the tip of the stick
over the lizard, slip the noose over his
head and bam, you have a live playmate,
at least until dad lets them loose
anyway. This practice may be frowned
upon by some, frankly I do, but I have a
young son and he is going to be doing
these kind of things for some years into
the future. My hope is if he sees me
treating the lizards humanly, angry with
him if he abuses them more than we
already have, it will stick with him. I
don’t know. How different am I than the
people here trying to develop catch and
release sport fishing as an attraction
here in the Galapagos? These are big
fish, Marlin, Wahoo, etc. caught in open
ocean water, supposedly outside the
Galapagos National Park reserve’s forty
mile boundary (no chance, the park
doesn’t have the resources to patrol it,
these boats go where they think the fish
are). The catch and release mortality
rate for marlins is twenty-five percent,
one in four caught die, in theory just
outside the Galapagos marine reserve.
These sport fishing boats have huge
motors that burn an incredible amount of
fuel to get these wealthy “eco friendly”
fishermen to their targets. I had a
conversation/debate at a symposium we
had last week with one of
 my
neighbors. The symposium was about how
to develop local, sustainable tourism
based economies. My neighbor was trying
to make the point that “fishing with
locals” actually kills fish while catch
and release does not. Most of you know
we developed the “fishing with locals”
thing here as a way to provide local
fishermen with a sustainable way to make
a living, rather than over fishing
already depleted fisheries. Instead of
killing ten thousand fish a year to
survive (unsustainable), they can make a
living killing only a couple of hundred
with visitors (sustainable), that they
then cook and eat that night together
with the tourists in their homes. My
final question to my neighbor was, “Why
don’t we also promote catch and release
activities for Giant tortoises? Marine
iguanas? Sea lions? I bet a 300 hundred
pound male sea lion would put up a
“sporting fight.”
Siempre Amor,
Rick, Bere and Roley
Family and Friends
Letters 2009.
November
2009
Dear Friends and Family,
Sea turtles go to the car wash, or
rather shell wash. It happens in fairly
shallow water, six or eight feet. They
park
 themselves, shells slightly
elevated off a sand bottom by their
flippers so all the little sucker fish
can clean the barnacles off their
shells, top and bottom. They go into a
kind of trance and as long as you don’t
splash around too much you can dive,
hang on to a rock and check them out
face to face for as long as you can hold
your breath. The shell wash happens in
certain coves near low tide on an
outgoing tide. Many of you have seen
this. For those of you who have traveled
with us who didn’t, it was only because
the tide wasn’t right or you were busy
doing something else equally “cool”.
It is an understandable and an
appreciated characteristic of many of
our “hearts” to give us advice on how to
do various things. It is unique for
travelers to spend time with the owner
and family of the company with whom they
are traveling. Sometimes this advice has
to do with details of their tour which
we truly do appreciate; often times
people can not help but point out
business opportunities that they see we
are missing here. Just a few examples I
can remember off the top of my head
repeated with sincere respect, a wry
smile and again true appreciation for
you all who chose to travel with us: dry
cleaners on the island (Thank you,
Ralph), inflatable penguins, sea
iguanas, sea lions, giant tortoises and
blue footed boobies (Thank you Carol,
actually one of my favorite and we may
do it), tanning salon on the flights
over (Thank you, Jeffery), helicopter
rides (Thank you Gordon), motorcycle
rentals (Thank you, Christen), night
goggles for stalking animals at night
(Thank you Cynthia, I’m sorry you
stubbed your toe that night), brothel
(Thank you George and yes we did cover
your bar tab), bottling and selling
Galapagos Bamboo Water (Thank you Jen),
movie theatre (Thank you Fred), golf
course (Thank you Hank). It has to make
you wonder, how in the world DO we
survive here?
Who-da-dawg? Our
dog, Luna is a good friend of the dog
catcher. All he has to do is tell her to
go home and she does, or if there are
other dogs around he calls her to him,
pets her, the other dogs come over and
he can easily lasso them and then he
tells Luna to go home and takes the
other dogs off to the pound. She is a
“Who-da dawg”. This comes from the men
in charge of eradicating wild goats.
What they do is capture one, paint it
orange and mount a transponder on it.
Then when they are up in the helicopter
with their rifles, they can locate the
herd by the transponder, shoot all but
the painted one. As goats are herding
animals the painted goat will always
find other goats. The guys in the
helicopter can come back the next day
and the next and do the same until there
is only the one goat left. They call
this goat the Judas goat, or as it is
pronounced in Spanish “who-da”, hence
Luna is the Who-da-dawg and the answer
to the question, Who da dawg?
Friday mornings you can buy consuelo de
mariscos. This is sea food (shrimp,
fish, octopus) in a peanut butter and
 ground corn sauce, squeeze a bunch of lime on it, dump some hot sauce and you
have what amounts to Galapagos Thai
food. We also have white bread here,
just like Webbers or Wonder Bread in the
US, thinly sliced, but we can also buy
this bread without the crust. It comes
in a sharp cornered, white rectangular
block/loaf of crust less white stuff
that quickly turns to paste in your
mouth, incredibly popular for hors
devours, quarter section of one leaf of
the loaf, topped with cheese and a slice
of hot dog skewered with a tooth pick...
Not having these delicacies at a
gathering has plummeted social
standings.
The sea lions are
birthing again. Almost everyday there is
a new born on the beach out in front of
the office. You know when because a
flock of frigate birds will be circling
and swooping the beach welcoming the pup
into the world while dining on the
placenta that helped bring him to life.
It is also the beginning of the season
when we have to keep an extra eye on
uneducated tourists who want to take
flash pictures of the pups (blinds them)
or pet them (the smell of a human hand
on them makes their mothers disown
them). We’ve encouraged the Park and the
airlines to at least give some remedial
information on the airplane on the way
over, which they haven’t. What I wanted
was a multiple choice test. If a
traveler didn’t pass it, they couldn’t
get off the plane.
We found
some photos we had lost of a family day
spent on the other side of the island a
few months back. That’s my son and I
playing with a crab on the beach and our
son negotiating his way through a
tortoise stampede, also there is one of
our clients playing with two sea lions
underwater and one of their shots of a
marine iguana eating underwater.
Siempre Amor,
Rick, Bere and Roley
Family and Friends Letters 2009.
October
2009
Dear Friends and Family,
A “Macho” male sea lion’s rein
over a colony of five to twenty females
lasts only a couple/three weeks. They
spend all of their time mating with and
protecting the colony. The few moments
in between they might catch a cat nap or
be engaged in fighting off other would
be kings. They don’t have time to go
feed. So where do the vanquished, beat
up, famished and exhausted male sea
lions go after they have relinquished
their rein on a colony? They go to sea
lion bachelor pads. Usually a small
beach some where within easy swimming
distance of several colonies, large flat
screen TVs, refrigerators fully stocked,
pizza only a phone call away, plush
couches… What a life, three weeks on
with a harem of females, bar room brawls
for the harem, a little patrolling in
between and then when you loose one of
those brawls as much time as you want
watching sports and eating pizza.
The other day I left the door to the
office open and went around the corner
for
 a
second to talk to a friend. The second
lasted fifteen minutes. When I returned
there was a sea lion lying on our couch
in the office. I had to chase her out
for fear of her peeing or pooping on the
furniture. They’re not house broken and
were it not for the defecation issue,
I’d have let her be. It’s used furniture
after all. Directly outside there was a
man, camera clad, pale skin, brand new
REI tropical khakis, odd very expensive
looking small back pack, watching me
through goggle sized eye glasses on the
flip screen of his camera while filming
me. I finished shoeing the sea lion out
by the clapping of my hands and looked
up to find him approaching me. Without
preliminaries he asked, “Didn’t I see
you going surfing this morning?” I
admitted I did surf that morning. “How
many people were you surfing with?”
Three or four. Why was he asking me?
“How were the waves?” Pretty good.
“Aren’t those blue footed boobies diving
in the water and sitting on the rocks
over there?” Yes, “And pelicans and lava
gulls?” Yes. “Those are frigate birds
circling over head, right? And that’s a
sea iguana swimming across the cove just
outside of that sea turtle that just
took a breath,” Yes… He didn’t say
anything more, he stepped back, raised
his camera once more, took a picture of
me in front of the office, turned and
walked away shaking his head as if I had
done something incredibly impolite.
We have a product here pronounced,
“Sear-rope-ay-mah-play”, Maple Syrup. A
“Wheatie”, spelled Guitig is not a
serial flake, but is what amounts to
Ecuadorean Perrier.
September and
October are cold as it gets here, the
absolute dead of winter. People who
normally wouldn’t wear shoes do, dawn
long pants and jackets, if they have
them. The low temperature might reach
sixty-five, the high seventy-two. The
sun hits the earth about half the day
light hours. We don’t get storms here,
no typhoons, no thundering winds, what
we do get in our winter at the coastal
elevations are periods of drizzle, the
strongest of which on a silent night you
can barely hear peppering the roof. To
me it is nice lying in bed at dawn,
needing only a light blanket to be cozy
warm and to listen to the drizzle
dripping from the trees. I relish it,
mustard too with pickles. Our most
dramatic weather happens in the summer
when, not every year, but some we get
torrential down pours, like three inches
an hour, oxygen purging down pours that
you would only call heavy rain because
that is
what people call them. More accurately
they are waterfalls and they happen when
the outside temperature is a super muggy
eighty-five degrees, the ocean temp. the
same and they rarely last an hour. Dry
gorges that make you wonder how they
were created become dirty brown,
frothing white rushing river rapids,
over flowing bridges, carrying away
first all the trash and kid’s shanty
forts. People often ask, when is the
best time of year to visit the
Galapagos? Living on the equator, it is
hard not to get tired, beat down by the
sun that feels as though it is arriving
through a magnifying glass. The
Galapagos is a unique location in that
we are tempered by the Humboldt Current
so that even at its worst the
temperature is somewhat humbled. Maximum
high 85 degrees. These sometimes drizzly
months are welcome. The best time to
come here? When you feel like it, no
kidding.
Sally Light Foot crabs
and Gretta Garbo have a few things in
common. One is they change their shell,
completely abandon the old one,
including eye sockets, leave it on the
rocks so they can grow into a new one.
Two is that they both embraced their
name sake during world war two. Three is
that both are very pretty, the crabs are
brilliant red and pink with turquoise
side panels. And four, I believe they
have in common this quote of Greta’s,
“Life would be so wonderful if we only
knew what to do with it.” The local kids
stab them with sticks and make a stew in
a can with a small fire at the remote
surf breaks even though it is now
against the law. The Sally Light Foot
crabs received their name from a woman
who was staying on the island at the US
army base here during World War 2. She
could “cut a rug” (using the vernacular
of the time), but could not be caught
(without a spear). She liked red dresses
and her name was… You guessed it, Sally.
Siempre Amor,
Rick, Bere and
RoleyFamily and Friends
Letters 2009.
September
2009
Dear Friends and Family,
 Every
other day at 8:00 AM the giant tortoises
stampede in the Galapagera on the far
side of the island. They get up on their
toes and sprint. You can hear their
shells clunking together as they jockey
for position. If you are in the path of
a giant tortoise stampede… some say the
best thing to do is to find a tree or
bush to shelter behind and curl up in a
ball position. Others say you can “turn”
the stampede if you fire a pistol shot,
but of course you’d have to have a
pistol. At least with stampeding giant
tortoises you’ll have time to get some
pictures before you’re run over.
We’ve been traveling in the US for most
of August partly for business and partly
so my mom could spend some time with her
grandson. This involved some time in
Quito with my wife’s
family. “Izing” is a thing done to a
person or object. In Quito dry cleaning
is not called “limpiando seco”, but by a
term I remember in the US from my
childhood, Martinizing. You can also
have your car Volcanized in Quito.
Volcanization does not have anything to
with a mind meld. Martinization contrary
to what I believed as a child has
nothing to do with Martians. Apparently
there was a man with a patented chemical
cleaning process named either Martin
Felix or Felix Martin. I can think of
four other “izings”, womanizing,
merchandizing, Rolandizing and
Galapagizing. Rolandizing is what is
happening to my wife and I. It is the
result of spending a lot of time with
our son Roland. Galapagizing is what
happens to you when you travel here with
us.
In the San Francisco Bay
Area, purely by coincidence we have been
able to
 meet
with three groups before they came here.
Now when we visit my mom we get to
reunite with them. That is one of the
odd things of this business, getting to
know and care for people and then
watching them get on a plane and fly out
of your life forever, which is what
mostly happens. From the bottom of our
hearts, thank you so much Leon and Jen,
Norman, Phyllis, Joyce and family and
Edward and Mary. We did get to meet
another family this trip in Santa Cruz,
CA and hope to be seeing them here soon.
Siempre Amor,
Rick, Bere and EreyFamily and Friends
Letters 2009.
August
2009
Dear Friends and Family,
To swim with dolphins
in the open ocean is a fleeting
experience and somewhat rare. A pod of
dolphins in the open
 ocean
are heading somewhere with a purpose and
usually do not have the time or the care
to wait around for a slow goofy fish,
that would be you in the water with
them. You can pick up a pod of dolphins
with a boat. There is nothing they love
better than to play in the bow waves of
a boat. Actually they play in the sub
surface bow waves of the water the boat
is pushing which you can not see on the
surface. The ones that burst the surface
only do it as a trick and to get a look
at you. What happens is, you spot the
pod, the captain brings the boat amongst
them on their heading. They start
goofing around with the bow wake. You
climb up front, lean over the bow with
your camera and get a ton of photos of
dolphins playing in a bow wake arms
distance from your camera. Then when you
are bored with this, because the
dolphins will not be for some time you
can jump overboard with your mask and
snorkel right in the middle of the pod
and you will see them dodging your
plummeting entrance into the open ocean.
The trailing dolphins of the pod will be
swimming all around you. You’ll hear
their squeaks, some may swim by close to
get a look at you and then they fade
into distant waters and you can hear
their squeaks recede with their images
along with the boat and then they are
gone. I had done this several times to
my great thrill and wonder until a
couple of years ago one of our guides
showed me the error of my ways. I happen
to be on a boat with him and a group of
our “hearts” (guests) heading out for
the normal wonders of a day on a
chartered boat trip here in the
Galapagos, swimming with sea lions, sea
turtles, sharks, rays etc. ho hum, when
the captain spotted a pod of dolphins
off the port bow. Encountering pods of
dolphins on these trips happens, if you
make a year round average one out of
every five to ten boat trips, depending
on season and currents etc. On this
trip, we spotted the dolphin pod, our
Galapagos National Park guide, Pepo, who
many of you know winked at me, flew up
the ladder to the captain’s deck (small
deck, small boat) and blasted off a
bunch of instructions. Our hearts were
soon over the top excited about their
experience of hanging over the bow with
their cameras, dolphins flying out of
the water looking directly at them,
again just a few feet away. After a
short time, Pepo instructed everyone to
“Suit up” in the stern. It was early
March so that meant fins, masks and
snorkels, no
wetsuits, water temp. 82 degrees. He
positioned everyone to be able to jump
off the traveling boat together just as
the captain slowed the engines. One,
two, three. We hit the water, and
looking around underwater saw dolphins
flying/swimming all around, all seemed
to be squeaking, then fading and gone.
While we floated in the open ocean, the
captain put the boat in gear, motored
off and made a wide “one-eighty” arching
turn returning toward us with the
dolphin pod in tow. As they approached
everyone saw that twenty feet below the
surface the pod had leading scouts fifty
yards in front of the boat and pod. The
scouts swam by with smiles within arms
length of several us and then the
majority of the pod, thick school of two
hundred pound dolphins threaded their
way through us, the boat cruised by to
our side and the trailing dolphins… It
was as if they were happy to see us
again. We repeated this several times
the boat making giant figure eights in
the ocean that crossed where we floated.
We try never to promise that people
will see anything here. There is no
better way to jinks something. When the
weather or currents are not
accommodating we never say things like
“You should have been here yesterday”.
That just puts people in a position to
be disappointed about their vacation
when even on the worst days there are
some true marvels to be experienced
here.
In the above blurb about
dolphins I didn’t use the words
“mystical experience” or “spiritual
connection”. Those kind of words are
awfully “pushy”. Mystical experiences
and spiritual connections can be
intense, but they can also be fragile
and don’t generally lend themselves to
being pushed around, likewise with
rainbows and dreams. I am not very fond
of talking, hearing or reading about
them either. What do they mean? What is
the subject’s sub conscious trying to
communicate? What is the significance of
seeing or remembering them? Don’t you
have anything more important to talk
about? That being said, over the past
six months I have been having recurring
dreams about a fifth inhabited island
here in the Galapagos which doesn’t
exist. I’ve developed relationships with
the people on that
 island,
discovered new things about it and them
each time I visit it in dream, all of
which carry over into the next dream. I
won’t bore you with the details, but
that’s pretty weird for dreams isn’t it?
And the other day, the sun was low, not
quite setting. It was drizzling in the
highlands. The drizzle had reached the
coast with the breeze. I was walking
with our two year old son in his
stroller after our beach session,
heading for his bath. We cast sharp
shadows in the direction from which the
drizzle was peppering us. There was this
complete double rainbow, both brilliant,
the “brilliance/clarity” was
“incredible/unbelievable”, but the
remarkable thing was how high in the sky
they were, almost over head. I pointed
them out to our son. He said yellow and
purple in both Spanish and English and
pointed, “Hay dos” (there are two). He
doesn’t have the words rainbow or
arcoides (“arcoides” Ecuadorean Spanish
for “arco” which is generally Spanish
for rainbow). He was more interested in
playing with the whale bone vertebrae in
his hand. It was as if he wasn’t very
“fond” of talking about them either.
Pushing dreams and rainbows around with
words hardly seems right. By the way my
wife has a dolphin story that will give
you goose bumps.
Siempre Amor,
Rick, Bere and Erey
Family and Friends
Letters 2009.
July
2009
Dear Friends and Family,
It is odd how we all
get so used to our surroundings that
they become unremarkable when in fact
our surroundings given a particular
perspective are always remarkable. I can
imagine you for example in the
supermarket choosing between various
brands of Boston Baked Beans, even
various brands of vegetarian Boston
Baked Beans. That
wasn’t remarkable to me when I lived in
the US, but now that I am here where
there are no Boston Baked Beans unless
we make them, it has become remarkable.
Yesterday I hiked out to one of the surf
spots hoping to be able to surf only to
find that I had been optimistic in my
readings of the indicators here in the
bay of surf out there. So, disappointed
I sat down to watch the ocean and clouds
for a while. A group of blue footed
boobies were working just off the rocks,
diving and bobbing up like submerged
volleyballs, the way they do, there was
a six foot marine iguana next me. I
could have reached out and touched him
if I’d wanted to bother, not more than
ten feet in front of my feet were five,
two and three year old sea lion pups
sunning themselves, just to the left was
the skeleton of a baby pilot whale that
had washed up a few weeks back and now
that the crabs had done their work it
looked a little like a dinosaur
exhibition might in a museum, skull and
trailing vertebrae. So, finding nothing
remarkable about the clouds or the
ocean, I pulled out the book I was
re-reading for maybe the tenth time in
my life, A Book Of Common Prayer, by
Joan Didion.
Before you can pick
up your luggage now in the Galapagos it
gets sniffed by dogs. At first I thought
they were sniffing for drugs, turns out
the dogs are donated by the Sea Sheppard
Foundation and they are sniffing for
shark fins and sea cucumbers. Apparently
it is easier to smuggle poached ocean
articles out of the Galapagos than the
mainland (just meet a ship in the middle
of the night outside the territorial
waters at such and such time and
coordinates) and so mainland poachers
have been shipping their contraband here
in luggage on the airlines.
We
had elections for our National Assembly
this month, similar to congress.
Everyone in Ecuador is required to
 vote.
If you don’t vote you have to pay a
fine. You can not get a driver’s
license, telephone or leave the country
without showing your voter’s stub. Here
on San Cristobal everyone gets dressed
up to go vote, bring the kids along in
their Sunday best. On the continent
there are long lines etc. but here the
actual voting takes about half a minute.
You just vote for your friends or
friends of friends. There are only 5,000
voters here on San Cristobal, the rest
of the population are kids. It took them
three days to count the votes. They
cordoned off two blocks around the
police station while they counted to be
sure no body tampered with the votes or
intimidated the vote counters.
When locals are giving directions to
each other in town, a frequent reference
point is “four corners”. Of course the
majority of intersecting streets have
four corners. There might be as many as
a hundred of them. This particular
intersection was of the first two
streets.
I am the only gringo
living on the island. There are two
gringas (female Americans) who married
locals. One of them is an older gal
pushing sixty. We don’t talk, which is
odd, particularly here. I’ve tried
several times. I think she is a little
awkward, shy or arrogant. I’m not sure
which. The other is a younger gal late
twenties, just had a kid with her
Galapaganian husband. She has fluent
Spanish, very amiable and competent in
business and work. Her husband was born
and raised here. He is a Galapagos
National Park guide, a good one, speaks
five languages. We’re neighbors.
Historically he and Bere never got
along owing to his womanizing of her
guests at the B&B and his occasional
drug use before he was married. We
loaned her the rocker my father sent for
our new born which to hear her talk
apparently saved her sanity. Still there
was a frost on our relationships. So the
other night about nine, I’m walking home
after finishing up the days work and he
calls me over for a glass of wine. The
two of them are sitting on the stoop
outside their street side door with some
really nice crystal wine glasses (a
wedding present) and some
decent wine. Turns out they were on
their second bottle. Anyway we spent the
next six hours “bonding” on their stoop.
I learned that here on San Cristobal at
1 AM on a Sunday/Monday night when
everything has long been shut down,
streets are completely deserted (not
even sea lions since the new Malicon)
you can always go to Walter’s. Walter in
the day light is a very humble, shuffle
stepping man. I hadn’t known his
occupation. In the middle of the night
you go to his iron barred window that
has a small door, one foot high, ten
inches wide and knock through the bars.
Walter is behind that door dispensing
ALL late night needs. You must be very
discrete, very quiet. Give him the money
first. We were there only for a bottle
of wine. My neighbor was very proud to
show me this. It has taken me some time
(years) to understand the nuances of how
we are perceived by the community as a
whole, to many we are intimidating if
not threatening even though our work and
manners usually are not. This has to do
with my wife’s forceful, stand up for
what is right and just, her manner of
handling the world and the simple fact
that I am a gringo, gringo’s being
famous for wanting things on time and be
able to do things. So Jeffery (the
husband) slurs to me late that night in
Spanish, “I always thought you were a
little awkward, shy or arrogant”.
Siempre Amor,
Rick, Bere and Erey
Family and Friends
Letters 2009.
June
2009
Dear Friends and Family,
AH1N1… In the first
weeks of April we had been writing six
different groups about coming to the
Galapagos. The swine flu broke out and
all of them put their travel plans on
hold. Normally we receive a letter or
two a day requesting information. On
average about one in eight or ten
actually arrive here in the Galapagos
with us. Since the outbreak of swine flu
we have been receiving one or two
letters a week and not a single one last
week though our position in Google
search results remains the same or
better.
There are more reported
cases of swine flu in the US than in the
entire rest of the world. I’m sure this
has to do with detection, monitoring and
in the worst cases an unwillingness to
publicize the truth by some countries.
This bug has circumnavigated the globe.
Even with all of that, travelers have a
better chance of catching the flu in New
York City than they do traveling abroad.
There are people in the scientific
community who are already saying this is
a “dry run” for a real pandemic. And
then there is Dr. Leonard Horowitz’
conspiracy theory which is cause for
tears, laughs or wonder.
While
the AH1N1 virus is apparently far less
lethal than your garden variety flu to
people it is quite dangerous to
companies involved in tourism and we are
no exception. Our company had been
doubling its business each year and 2009
was looking like we might finally make a
profit. Encourage your friends and
family to come sooner rather than later,
if not for ourselves, for the people
that work with/for us.
The bright
side of all of this may be the raising
of world wide health consciousness, how
colds and flu are transmitted, common
sense precautions which most of us have
ignored for far too long and a
heightened awareness of how small
choices and actions can have profound
world wide effects.
 On
a lighter note there were two volunteers
working here this month, David Andrews
and Lauren Tyler from England. We had
originally planned that they would be
working with the scientists planting the
Jennifer Glover Endemic Species Recovery
Park, however we had an exceptionally
hot May and the scientists from the
Charles Darwin Foundation wanted to hold
off planting until it cooled down a
little. So David and Lauren did a bunch
of work with a weed whacker and a
machete. Cool kids.
We have a new
guide working for us, Daniela who was
raised on Isabela, pop. 1,000. Both of
her parents are Galapagos National Park
guides. She had been here to San
Cristobal a number of times, but had
never done tours the way we do, so I
“had” to accompany her and her first
group of “hearts” with us for much of
their tour while here on San Cristobal.
We were out on this group’s chartered
all day boat trip to swim with the sea
life etc. and we were just off the small
island of Isla de Lobos (Sea Lion
Island), goofing around with the sea
lion pups. They were doing their usual
antics, swimming around us, blowing
bubbles in our face masks, etc. I had
brought along a boogie board with a
small leash that I let dangle in the
water which entertained the sea lion
pups no end, biting and tugging on it.
You get used to this kind of thing
living here so after a short while I
pulled myself up onto the boogie board
just to rest and watch our hearts and
guide enjoying themselves with the sea
lion pups playing around on the leash
just below the boogie board. Within a
few minutes I was joined on the boogie
board by one of the pups who nuzzle up
to my face and tucked its muzzle under
my chin. That even I am not used to.
In Spanish cazar (to hunt) and casar
(to marry) sound very similar. So much
so that I’ve had to twist my small mind
around people saying things that sound
to me like, “We married monkeys while on
the mainland,” or “I hunted my wife two
years ago”. Sala is a couch and a living
room and a waiting room. Cocina is both
a kitchen and an oven. Pilas are
batteries and ability. People will say
“Put on your batteries” when they want
you to get motivated to get something
done.
I still get nervous when
new groups of hearts arrive. It
surprises me sometimes when I catch
myself nervously waiting for hearts that
are stepping off the plane. You’d think
I’d be over it by now, but I’m not. I
think about everyone who works for us,
is this group going to be difficult for
them. I worry about if maybe I forgot
something, worry about the hearts, did
they have a good trip over. It is so
important for everyone’s sake that our
hearts get off to a good start. So I
always put my batteries on when going to
the airport.
Siempre Amor,
Rick, Bere and Erey
Family and Friends
Letters 2009.
May 5,
2009
Dear Friends and Family,
A pod of killer whales
chased a group of sea lions up onto Five
Fingers yesterday, a nearly vertical
islet/rock a mile outside the bay of San
Cristobal. According to one of our
“hearts” (clients) and fisherman Segundo
Lopez who witnessed the incident, one
Orca nearly cleared the water as it
leapt up the near vertical face of the
rock and knocked a large female sea lion
from its precarious purchase on the
rock. The two crashed back into the sea
together where another Orca practically
caught it landing in the water and began
dining. Many of you have fished off this
rock with the local fishermen and will
have a clearer understanding of this
natural event. I will send photos as
soon as I receive them.
Last
month three quarters of the population
of San Cristobal came down with
conjunctivitis (pink eye) ourselves
included. We got it from our kid who got
it from another kid who likely got it
from some visiting tourist. None of our
clients received it mostly because we
made sure they sterilized their hands
several times a day. Pink eye is
irritating, itchy, water eyes, sometimes
minor cold symptoms. In Spanish we say “bien
molestoso”. Molestar means to molest
which is used in a sense closer to
“bother” rather than the more sinister
aspects associated with molest in
English. So pink eye, which in Spanish
is called “China Eye” is very molestic.
You can imagine what the swine flu
thing has done to tourism here. We’re
thankful we don’t live and have our
business in Mexico. At the airport,
before you leave the plane you are
required to thoroughly wash your hands
with vodka smelling disposable towels,
have to step into an a pan of chemicals
to sterilize your shoes, every employee
is wearing a face mask. Returning from
China I was happy to see it, though
someone should explain that face masks
are not designed to keep you from
getting the bug, but from spreading it.
 Our
trip to China was a business trip to
Beijing. Beijing, The Forbidden City,
Tiananmen Square, the captital and most
conservative of all the major cities in
China. Their money comes in colors,
pink, blue, brown with pictures of Mao
Zedong. Greatest hits: I ate some fine
roast duck meat and a bunch of duck
tongues in a soup (tastes like a small
mushroom) and brain (tastes like liver).
Taxi drivers don’t know where anything
is. You have to give them directions.
China World Trade Center, this written
in Chinese frequently received this
response. “Nope, no idea, try another
taxi”. At least that´s what I imagined
they were saying. Not speaking, writing
or reading Chinese, nor being familiar
with Beijing, until the arrival of our
interpreter most of our communication
involved interpretive dances. For
breakfast the first morning I found
myself making pluck-pluck noises,
flapping bent arms and reaching for my
bottom to produce something imaginary in
my hand with the idea I was asking for
eggs. You can imagine what they thought.
The Chinese people we
met as a whole were wonderful, patient
and generous. They do not think at all
like western people do. As ambitious
westerners with limited time and lofty
goals we not only want to get from point
A to B, but follow through to Z and for
organization’s sake in that order and we
want it done yesterday. The Chinese as a
rule do not think in terms of limited
time, nor do they see the importance
that A should follow B or even why start
at A? To them Q, G, W and N are as
important as anything and sequential
order is only a construct. They seek
first to understand and look for their
understanding in the details. Laws,
regulations, attorneys are not nearly as
important to them as relationships.
In the global economic crises, with
pig flu flying around, it feels odd to
be here in San Cristobal still finding
our business growing. It has a lot to do
with all of you and your kind
recommendations.
Siempre Amor,
Rick, Bere and Erey
Family and Friends
Letters 2009.
April 3,
2009
Dear Friends and Family,
We send as many of our
“hearts” to Floreana as we can convince
to go there. Floreana (pop. 85) is still
and will remain for some time a largely
untouched jewel. It is just too hard to
get to and when you do, there is nothing
 there
except Floreana, another island in the
Galapagos chain of islands. At the
water’s edge depending on the light and
your mood it can look gorgeous in a
travel poster kind of way, crystal clear
water coves, lagoons and beaches
bordered by a prehistoric looking lava
landscape or it can look desolate,
foreboding as if you’ve just found
yourself on the far edge of civilization
at an outpost, a barely surviving
colony. You have. There are few places
left on the globe this remote. The
highlands are green, pastoral even. It
has a small fresh water spring and for
that reason was the first island to be
settled and later almost completely
abandoned for lack of a good a harbor.
At one point, between 1929 and 1935
there were three groups of people living
on the island, all of German descent.
The island where this takes place is
practically the farthest point on the
globe from Germany and that was I’m sure
part of its appeal. They came to embrace
the dream of living on a deserted desert
island as far away from civilization as
they could get. The first to arrive of
these was a rather eccentric couple
whose idea was to create on the then
uninhabited island a “utopia”, albeit a
Nietzen utopia. As you may know the
Uberman was not at all a friend to
women’s rights. This couple left both of
their spouses in Germany to begin this
adventure together, not a very popular
thing to do in 1929, leaving spouses.
The wannabe Uberman had all of his teeth
pulled and a set of stainless steel
dentures made. He didn’t want to be half
way around the world from the nearest
dentist when he got a tooth ache. Soon
after their arrival, the island was
“invaded” by another couple and their
twelve month old son, the Whitmers. The
Nietzies suddenly had neighbors on their
here to for deserted desert island. And
finally a third party of really crazy
people showed up, a dominant, sex fiend,
liar, thief, manipulator older gal and
her two younger subject males. She
called herself a Baronessa and
immediately proclaimed herself “Empress
of the Galapagos”. Her guiding light and
favorite book was Oscar Wilde’s, The
Picture of Dorian Gray. Imagine Nietze
and Oscar Wilde on one of the most
distant and difficult to get to islands
in the world trying to get along and in
the middle between the two a relatively
innocent family.
The story of the
Barronessa is a famous Galapagos story.
There is murder, mystery, jilted lovers,
an odd ball mix of people struggling for
survival. It is in most of the guide
books and for me the sensational over
shadows the good parts. Our National
Park guides that many of you know are
not at all enthused about the story of
the Baronessa. They see the whole sordid
affair as nothing more than some
irrelevant over hyped incident with
little relevance to today. And they are
right in their naturalist’s perspectives
to the degree that those events did not
impact the islands as much as say
whalers decimating the giant tortoises
and whales or settlers introducing
species of plants and animals that have
done far greater damage. Those early
“colonists” though did have an impact
that resonates to this day. In their
time practically every newspaper reading
man on the planet knew of the Galapagos
and what these people were trying to do
or a version of it. They were famous.
They put the Galapagos “on the map” for
many people. I haven’t been able to
encourage much interest in this story
with our hearts while they’re here.
Everyone is so happy swimming with the
sea lions, communing with the Boobies,
iguanas, giant tortoises etc. that this
small bit of history, gossip almost, is
not so important.
Admittedly the
story about the Baronessa of Floreana
boils down to a kind of predictable
petrie dish experiment, an adult version
of “Lord of the Flies”; take a bunch of
loonies, isolate them on an island and
immediately or soon after they’ll start
emotionally and physically abusing each
other and sometime after that they’ll
start killing each other, not really all
that interesting unless there is some
build up and character development. They
were characters, but I’ll spare you that
and get straight to what is interesting
to me. Now that you’ve been there or
when you will be there looking at a
rainbow colored sea iguana or watching a
giant tortoise the size of a washing
machine that was alive when your
great-great-grandfather was born, trying
to eat the sandal out from under your
foot, perhaps you’ll think about the
following.
Only eighty years ago
there was an uninhabited island on the
globe where you could just arrive and
set up a life/try to survive in the
wilderness. Not only that, but there
were boats that would take you there.
This island came complete
with fruit trees and herds of wild cows,
pigs and goats. In 1929 you could pack
up your bags, bring what ever you could
think of that you might need to survive
and just go. If that existed today
imagine the stampede of people and the
following holocaust of madness. In that
time, the above mentioned people were
the only ones able and willing to get
there.
Not only was the world
large enough then to offer this
opportunity, but you could reasonably
expect that if you were to write ongoing
articles about your experiences, you’d
get paid for it. Some of them did and
were paid. Articles, it is fun for me to
imagine similar to the letters I write
like this one. Those articles and the
subsequent murder mystery brought the
Galapagos Islands to the world’s
attention just before World War Two. In
fact one of these inhabitants was killed
in the bombings of Berlin a couple of
years later. Next imagine that
practically the only people visiting you
would be people like Bill Gates or
Donald Trump, stopping by as they
cruised the world in their luxury yachts
(small ocean liners), bringing you
gifts, entertaining you on board while
they visited, were or appeared
interested in your doofy little garden,
odd ball pets and ways and your
challenges. You were “a story” they
could tell at cocktail hour in the Ritz
Carlton, New York a story preceded by or
following one about pygmies in Africa.
They lived in the highlands of
Floreana where there was/is water and
enough moisture to support what amounted
to a jungle. Today this jungle is a mass
of invasive introduced species of
plants, but that is a different story.
One of the more difficult challenges
they all faced was carving out and
maintaining a space for their
subsistence garden and had the added
challenge of keeping the wild pigs,
goats and cows from destroying all of
their crops.
From the highlands
they could keep an eye on the horizon
for arriving ships which happened more
or less every couple of months. Unless
you’ve been here, it is hard to
understand the harshness of the
environment at the shore and the
distance between the shore and the more
temperate highlands where real trees (as
opposed to skeletal looking things that
have leaves on them for only several
weeks out of the year) grow and there is
moisture. In those days on Floreana it
was a tough two hour hike in either
direction (on Isabela it was an eight
hour trek). When a ship arrived, which
was obviously an event, they’d have to
hike/hurry down to see who it was.
If it was not a supply ship which
would be equally or more important it
would be Bill Gates or Donald Trump in
their world cruising ocean liners. The
supply ships of course bring mail and
supplies paid for by revenue from
newspaper articles or in exchange for
produce and meat or dairy. If it were
the latter there was any number of
possible advantages to be garnered and
there was naturally among the three
groups a competition to be the first to
greet the new arrivals. Imagine living
on Floreana in the way they did and
suddenly to have the opportunity to dine
on caviar, to receive news of the world
as it was unfolding, to hear classical
music played by a band, to dance to it,
to pass time with the captains of the
world’s economy. They would give you
gifts, often critical life saving items,
medicines, tools. Imagine that Bill
Gates gave you a shot gun and some
dynamite, the gun for the pigs and the
dynamite to help you clear boulders.
When an exceptionally crafty pig out
smarted all your efforts to shot it, you
resorted to trying to use the dynamite
to get him and failed.
The
“story” of the Baronessa has to do with
the death of the Uberman due to food
poisoning, food prepared by his female
partner and the disappearance of the
Baronessa and her remaining lover, the
other of her two lovers had been
relegated to slave status and died of
thirst on a neighboring island when his
boat sank while trying to escape. The
where abouts or bodies of the Baronessa
and her lover were never discovered,
while all of their possessions,
including the treasured copy of “The
Portrait of Dorian Grey” were left
behind. It is a kind of who done it
mystery. There’s a book, you can read by
a man named John Treherne, “The
Galapagos Affair” which has the best, to
my knowledge account and explanation of
the story of the Baronessa of Floreana.
The final tally goes something like
this. The Uberman was killed either
accidentally or on purpose by his
partner. The Baronessa either escaped
with her lover or was killed by someone
and their bodies never found. The
Baronessa’s other subject male died of
thirst on a beach in the sun on Marchena
Island. The Uberman’s partner returned
to Berlin where she was killed in the
bombings of that city toward the end of
World War Two. The couple with the
twelve year old, the Whitmers remained
and prospered in their way adding
another daughter to the family.
When I have a business trip to Floreana
it is mostly to coordinate day trips
from Isabela. I meet with the families
 who
came there directly after all of this,
predominantly with the Cruz family. One
of the brothers was the Governor of the
Galapagos, now heads up the World Wild
Life Foundation here, the other is
manager of The Charles Darwin Foundation
and the third still lives there running
the farm their father pioneered. I have
never met the surviving Whitmer, mother
of the twelve year old. She is in ill
heath and the family is not coping well
with the new reality of the Galapagos. I
do not believe I would be either. Up
until two years ago, if you wanted to
spend the night in a hotel on Floreana,
there was only one option, their hotel.
People would arrive there with
reservations for the night’s stay to
find a hysterical woman saying they
could not stay at the hotel. Her grand
daughter who is now managing the hotel
has not done a much better job. Not many
people arrive there wishing to spend the
night unless they are with us and have
the option of staying with the Cruz
family. Few of our “hearts” do owing to
the expense of maintaining a boat there
over night to take them away in the
morning. Attached photos of water’s edge
at Puerto Velasco Ibarra, Floreana and
one of the rainbow colored marine
iguanas found there. The colors are the
result of the type of kelp they eat
there. The third just for kicks a shot
of our son and his sea lion buddy I took
day before yesterday.
Siempre
Amor,
Rick, Bere and Erey
Family and Friends
Letters 2009.
Mar. 1,
2009
Dear Friends and Family,
Like many people, I often need
to travel for business. The
inconveniences are the same, lonely
nights, odd beds, disrupted schedules,
away from the family, etc. I am
fortunate in that most of my business
travel is within the
 Galapagos Islands, Floreana, Isabela or Puerto Ayora, Santa
Cruz. Often times I am flying with
clients, but I don’t think of those as
business trips. Those are more
stewardships of people’s vacations as
they usually come about by circumstances
of a sick guide or some other emergency.
A typical business trip begins with the
inter island airline calling the house
because I’m late and they’re holding the
plane for me. We’re only two minutes
away from the airport. The motors that
turn the props on those planes are not
much more than glorified lawn mowers set
on end. Take offs and landings are
thrilling. The views from these planes
can bring moments of wonder to even the
most hard boiled. Very few people get to
see the islands this way. After landing,
business gets in high gear. I usually
pull out a book and begin reading. One
trip I waited at the airport on Isabela
for two hours for the owner of one of
the hotels to pick me up. He forgot what
day it was. The airport is about a mile
out of town. It was sweltering hot. I
wasn’t going to start walking until I
got hungry. After the plane dropped me
off and flew away there was nobody
there. No telephones, just a couple of
buildings and the sun blasted runway
(this was in the days before we had cell
phones on the islands, two years ago).
They don’t even say “manana” when
talking about when they are going to get
things done here, they say “next week”.
The sleepy desert island pace of this
place can feel like a freight train the
way it smashes plans and ambitions. Most
business trips involve at least one high
level strategic planning session with
the captains of business such as they
are, read a long meandering, joke filled
conversation with friends and their
family. Someone will bring a fish or a
couple of lobsters or a hunk of pig or
cow, a case of beer and everyone will
eat. There might be a card or soccer
game and somewhere in all of that the
“business” will get squeezed in. If
Floreana is the destination this also
involves a boat trip, speeding past pods
of dolphins, whales, leaping manta rays
to arrive at Puerto Velasco Ibarra
(pop.85). There most “meetings”, most
socializing even, takes place in the
store. There is only one. They don’t
except credit cards, but do give credit.
You sit in plastic chairs with the hum
and breeze of two oscillating fans, the
shelves are lined with tennis shoes that
look like Keds or PF Flyers (if anyone
remembers) stacked in plastic bags.
There’s five gallon plastic flagons of
olive oil, vegetable oil and
cholesterol, cans of peas, beans, corn,
fruit, playing cards, diapers and
feminine needs, sacks of onions, beans,
rice and potatoes litter the concrete
floor. The refrigerator is available for
cokes, water, beer. Any conversation
you’re having is happily interrupted by
people coming and going, interring the
conversation for a while and then
leaving. I’ve been told when I’m there
business is more brisk than normal.
Everyone wants to get a gander at what
the boat brought in. They run a tattered
t-shirt up the flag pole if the store is
open or at night people can see the
light.
How do you tell if it is
going to rain here? We don’t have storms
that move along, west to east following
the jet stream. There is no weather
report on the nightly Galapagos news. We
do have oceanic currents moving massive
amounts of water and it is simply the
temperature of that water, moving under
the air with its temperature, throw in
some equatorial sun/heating… The right
combination and you got rain or rather
lots and lots of falling water. How you
can tell it will happen often times is
in the morning it’ll be hot, a few
degrees hotter than the usual hot,
windless and the air takes on a very
subtle yellow, almost burnt look. Get
the clothes in off the drying line, make
sure you haven’t left anything out
because in a couple of hours anything
unsheltered is going to be wet as if
it’d been dunked and held under water.
You pay your utility bills at THEIR
offices. Once a month you have to trudge
around town to the electric company,
typically $20, the phone company we have
a large phone bill because of the
company usually $200, city hall to pay
for water, $3. The one bank has an atm
machine outside that dispenses money
like any other atm machine in the world.
It just doesn’t accept deposits. In fact
we use that atm machine to move money
from the US to here as it is far cheaper
than wire transfers. The irksome detail
we have to deal with is that after
withdrawing funds from the atm machine
outside we then have to wait inside that
bank in a line, sometimes an hour or
more simply to put that money into our
account. Last week, for one afternoon
the bank was issuing counterfeit twenty
dollar bills, accidentally. You can
imagine the mess.
I man told me
he could tell I was from the United
States because of the accent I have in
my Spanish. My Spanish is so poor that
even the suggestion/euphemism made me
blink pink with pride.
We had an
opportunity to take a small vacation to
where we’ve sent quite a number of you,
Casa de Marita, Isabela. For those who
don’t know this is a small perhaps the
best run hotel in all of the Galapagos
that sits on a long sandy beach,
hammocks and lounges etc. out front, the
kind of place where you pour yourself a
drink and make a note of it for your
tab. In the water out front it is common
to swim with sea lions and penguins,
marine iguanas freely roam the beach and
rocks. We had the opportunity to meet a
man harvesting baby fish in the tide
pools. This place actually has tide
“pools” sand bottom pools perfect for
swimming around in with marine iguanas
decorating the rocks on the sides. The
man takes the baby fish to his place
down the beach where he “farms” them
into large fish in his own private tide
pools. Attached photos of tide pools
with penguins and iguanas and our son.
Siempre Amor,
Rick, Bere and Erey
Family and Friends
Letters 2009.
Feb. 1,
2009
Dear Friends and Family,
Bull Sea Lions: Every
other dawn I push our 19 month old in
front of me in his jogging stroller as I
jog/push. The stroller has speakers.
I’ve been on an ancient reggae (pre Bob
Marley/Jimmy Cliff) for dawn these days.
I have a
course I follow that crosses the pueblo,
the native market, the taxi coop. etc.
It gives me an over view of the bay, the
weather, the waves and ends at a beach.
Seven years ago there were no sea lions
on this beach. I’ve watched their
population grow little by little every
year so that now this beach is a colony,
a rockery. The pups are incredibly
playful, look at you as some kind of new
fun thing to goof around with, the moms
are a little leery, but not aggressive.
The bull sea lions on the other hand do
occasionally attack/bite, nasty
infectious bite too. There is only one
bull sea lion for each colony. His rein
lasts only a couple of weeks. He has the
job of protecting the colony from
predators, sharks and killer whales or
whatever else he thinks might be
dangerous, mating with the female
population (20 or 30) and fighting off
other bulls who want his job. He is a
busy/busy sea lion without time to hunt
or feed. A stronger, rested sea lion
will eventually convince him it is time
to take a break. So the head honcho
changes every couple of weeks. This
means my son and I get to know them,
watch them change from aggressive to
passive about our presence over the
weeks as they grow tired and used to
seeing us. Bull sea lions are not all
the same. They have quirks and
personalities. Younger and older bulls
have different tendencies and abilities.
When a new bull has taken over the
beach, particularly if he is young one,
he may not want to allow us to swim,
which as you can imagine can be
distressing for us. We’ll be goofing
around in the surf and this five hundred
pound monster with a lion’s mouth will
come charging through the water intent
on doing whatever harm he may. I grab
Rollie. Run. The monster hits the beach
with the velocity he gained in the water
and they can move on land too, he
chasses us up the beach barking and
bellowing. The trick, we’ve learned with
a new honcho is to get him to chase us
as far up the beach as possible. This
involves a little baiting of the
monster. You can imagine me with my 19
month old son in my arms trying to bait
a five hundred pound bull sea lion into
chasing us up the beach, probably
wouldn’t make the list of suggested
activities in Parents Magazine. If we
can get them high enough onto the dry
sand they’ll pause. You can practically
see their minds working as they head for
the idea to just take a break and rest,
which they often do and then we can go
swim. ‘Course I still need to keep an
eye on them. The next day they aren’t so
willing to go to all the effort. The
older bulls are far more energy
conscious, know we really aren’t a
threat, though they too get uppity in
their first few days with a new colony.
By the end of their term most of the
bull sea lions won’t give us a second
glance as they cruise by us swimming in
the shallows of the water they are
patrolling. I like to fantasize they are
patrolling for us too, they’ve seen us
playing with their pups, respecting
their terms.
San Cristobal is one
of the few Galapagos Islands with fresh
running water. On the south side of the
island is an actual waterfall cascading
into the sea. You have to have been here
to understand how remarkable this is.
The water makes ponds, pools and other
falls on its way down hill. It comes
bubbling up out of moss, blackberry and
fern covered mud in mosquito ridden
regions that are less than a thousand
feet below the highest elevation of the
island, year round. Also remarkable is
that the majority of this waterway is on
private property owned by a family with
the last name of Aguas (Waters). The
mover and shaker of this family, a Mr.
Milton Aguas took us up there a couple
of weeks back with the idea that our
“hearts” (clients) might be interested
in seeing this. We hiked the entire
water course way, followed it through
jungles in the highlands down through
the National Park border which occupies
about the last mile of coastal zone
before it reaches the sea. One of his
favorite ideas was to resurrect the rum
making still his grandfather had built
at one point along the way, sugar cane
presses etc. “Sample real Galapagos rum.
Imagine!”
We’re heading to
Beijing in April to meet Chinese
“outbound” tour operators. When I’m
speaking to someone who doesn’t speak
English, I switch to Spanish, doesn’t
matter if they’re Norwegian, African,
Eskimos, ridiculous I know. I’m sure
we’re going to have some stories. If
anyone has ideas, suggestions, anything
that might help… I feel like we’re
headed for Mars to negotiate trade
agreements between Milton Aguas and Ray
Walston (My Favorite Martian).
 A
pink land iguana found on one of the
volcanoes of Isabela. The scientists are
arguing about whether it is a new
separate species or a “mutant strain”.
You’ll have to ask them the difference.
Which would you rather be? The other is
approximately the same view of the
Jenifer Glover Endemic Species Recovery
Park that I sent last month, just to
show we are moving forward, albeit at a
Galapagos (evolutionary) pace.
Siempre Amor,
Rick, Bere and Erey
Jan. 4, 2009
Dear Friends and
Family,
While surfing,
frequently the waves will baptize you,
sometimes violently, holding you
underwater like some maniacal priest
while you try to relax and wait for the
opportunity to take a breath. When Bere
and I were getting ready to get married
one of the Catholic priests told us
(erroneously) that in order to get
married I would need to be baptized. I
tried to explain to him about the church
of the sea etc. to no avail. We have
only one lake here, but people aren’t
permitted to enter it. There are only
seasonally flooding rivers after
torrential rains. Guess where they
baptize people? That’s right, exactly my
point. They get baptized in the sea by a
maniacal priest holding them under
water.
Even in the hot season you
will see women walking with their arms
around each other. They are friends,
sisters, moms and daughters. You will
see men walking with their arms around
each other, fathers and sons or
brothers.
 Creation of the JKGESRP
- One of our hearts asked if there was a
foundation or something to which they
could donate money in the name of their
sister who will be visiting us. The idea
was, as a birthday present the sister
would be able to come here and see her
name on a plaque or something. I
believed she was thinking about a bench
or wall of plaques of donators. So I
asked around a little. Juan Carlos (head
of the Charles Darwin Foundation here on
San Cristobal) had an idea about making
a garden of endemic species with little
signs naming the various plants etc.
There was only one problem, where? Bere
had the idea, why not place it up on our
farm most of which is over grown with
invasive/non native species. Clear a
portion out to make room for the park
and plant it as close as could be
approximated to what it looked like
before man arrived here. Good, great
even. We presented the idea to Juan
Carlos, maybe an acre of land we’ll
donate, the Foundation will donate the
plants and some technical assistance we
will maintain it and the donation would
cover the costs of clearing and hardscape (fences, signs etc.). The head
of operations of the Charles Darwin
Foundation for all of the Galapagos sent
his right hand gal from Santa Cruz here
to check out what we had in mind, our
farm etc. It became apparent that what
they really needed was a laboratory site
to experiment with methods to suppress
invasive species of plants particularly
“Mora” or black berry vines which are
the most invasive and destructive to
native plant habitats of all the
introduced species. I was contacted by a
man working with the Foundation on his
Doctorate in the suppression of Mora. So
now we have The Jennifer Kayte Glover
Endemic Species Recovery Park, which
along with reforesting endemic plants is
also a working laboratory for the
suppression of invasive plant species.
The surprise birthday present was a
great success. How many people have a
park named after them in the Galapagos?
Maximo, Stalin, Wilson, Kennedy,
Hamilton, Whitman, Jefferson and Edison
are all first names of men here. I’ve
yet to have the pleasure of being
introduced to an Einstein, Reagan,
Clinton, Bush or Shakespeare. Many women
have names derived from men’s names,
Juana (Johnny), Fernanda (Freddy), Carla
(Charlie). There is a family here with
five kids. The father’s name is Carlos,
his daughter’s name is Carla and the
four other sons… Carlos. There are a
number of people you call as if it were
their name Second or Third (son) rather
than the name of their dad. Just that,
“Second, my friend, how are you doing?”
Another man I recently met is named
Sunday (Domingo), his father and
father’s father were named Sunday. I
asked him if he knew anyone else named
after days of the week. “Absolutely,” he
answered. “Didn’t you read Robinson
Crusoe? Remember Wednesday?”
 The
Galapagos National Park built and placed
a floating deck for sea lions. You can
see it on our web cam. The reason is
that the sea lions like nothing more
than to rest and defecate in boats. They
can easily leap five feet out of the
water to land on a boat deck. The deck
has been there for more than a week and
I’ve yet to see a sea lion on it.
We survived the holiday gauntlet
which this year was compounded by the
rush creation of the above mentioned
park, had some wonderful groups, teary
good byes.
Siempre Amor,
Rick, Bere
and Erey |
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CST#2083876-40 |
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