I’m Responsible For What? (A Galapagos story) By Rick Schleicher

Chapter 2
"Who You Gonna Call?"

Late one holiday before I’d met my wife she received a “radio” call from a friend of ours who was working as a guide on a cruise ship. Seems there was a very sick passenger. They were just off the coast of a neighboring island and the Captain of the ship would not turn it around and return to San Cristobal, sighting his concerns for the “schedule” and his other passengers. They were heading even further away from “civilization” and the guide was rightly very concerned for the tourist and had no one else to turn to. No one had answered the phone at the port or the naval base or the police station or the National Park.

It was “the day of the dead”, big party day here so she called Bere. At first Bere couldn’t find anyone able to go, either they had problems with their boat or were too drunk. She was finally able to find Angel Quimis sober fisherman friend, with a good boat and enough gas. It was getting late for the two hour boat ride out to Espanola Island. The return trip was going to be in the dark. So Bere sets out with Angel, arrives at the ship at sundown. Turns out the sick passenger is Japanese and has six fellow Japanese travelers. They would not be separated, insisted everyone had to go. The fishing boat was great for three or four people, but not for eight, particularly with the swell that was growing and the wind that was blowing and they wanted to take all their luggage. In the end the captain of the cruise ship left the nine people in the small fishing boat as the light faded, turned to starboard and made way for Floreana. What followed was a three hour return trip in an over loaded boat in large seas in the dark. This boat had no lights, no compass, no life vests. Angel did have a flashlight and to save the batteries he would turn it on only for a brief instant every fifteen minutes or so, shinning it out on the water. What he was doing was: he knew the swell was approaching south, south west, the wind at 15 degrees south of that, that he would intercept the current conflagration at about an hour after setting out, that the first current would set him a kilometer south and the second as it was running that week about a ½ kilometer north east, so he needed to keep the bow of the boat at a certain angle to the swell and hope all his guesses about current drift, wind drift and his guess how the over loaded boat was handling would be right. Within a half hour everyone in the boat was vomiting. The Japanese tourists spoke very little English and no Spanish. Three interminable hours later, the Angel entered the lighted buoy marked channel to the port in a direct line, never even having to change the direction of the boat from the time he set course. That’s seamanship in any sea, but in the Galapagos that’s super human. The Galapagos were named Las Islas Encanchatas; the enchanted islands by the early Spanish because they seemed to change position, could not be found where they had been previously charted. Even when they were sailing within the archipelago, sometimes it would be difficult to find an island that just the other day they had sailed from. What was actually happening was the various changing ocean currents that meet here, the Humboldt, the Cromwell, the South Equatorial, The Nino Flow and the Peru Coastal made it difficult to navigate with any certainty. The dominate current would change with the seasons and its strength varied also, year to year.

In the end, the captain of the tour boat was fired. The sick tourist recovered a few days later in a hospital in Quito. They had refused to pay the Angel for his expenses or time when they arrived safely in San Cristobal and shortly there after not only tried to sue the tour company, but also Angel and Bere. Angel and the guide who called Bere are working for us now.

When Bere and I decided we wanted to live and raise our family in the Galapagos, the next thing we had to decide was how we would go about making our living. Tourism was an obvious choice as I’m a gringo and Bere had been working with B&B’s for many years. We could have opened a hotel or a restaurant or bought a boat, instead we looked around for what didn’t exist and was needed. At that time no one was offering land based tours and as is still true today almost everyone working in tourism worked/works for a foreign owned profit driven company. So our idea was customized, private, land based tours of the Galapagos, community oriented to benefit the local economy. Initially our job had two parts, bring the people (marketing, etc) and coordinate services here. It soon expanded into developing a program where the local fishermen could give up their commercial fishing license in exchange for a license to take visitors out on their boats and developing the agricultural sector so our visitors could eat locally grown food. The local agriculture had been decimated by the large farms on the continent being able to grow food and ship it here at a cost that local farmers couldn’t compete with and survive as farmers. Our problem then, even as now has to do with volume of tourists. We bring about 100 a year. The foreign travel companies have since developed and market “economical” land based tours, bring thousands a year and just the opposite of being concerned about the local economy and community in which they operate these tours, they employ as much as they can from the continent, purchase as much as they can from the continent, have no interest in local fishermen or farmers. They target the “multi-sport economy travel” crowd, kayaking, camping, bike riding, etc. traditionally not a market for the Galapagos as there are better places to do all of those things than here. It used to be people came to the islands to see the animals, to get a first hand experience of the Galapagos, private land based tours give them the option to do this within the community, see the Galapagos from a local perspective while enjoying all the secret little spots the locals know.

Here in San Cristobal it is not at all inappropriate to go to the door of any house and ask for a drink of water, particularly if you’re a kid.


People name their sons Jackson, Kennedy, Wilson, Edison, Hamilton, Milton, Jefferson, Whitman, Stalin, Washington, Mercy is a popular name for girls, all given with high hopes. I’ve yet to have the pleasure of being introduced to an Einstein 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… All Carlos. There are a number of people you call as if it were their name, Second meaning second son or Third. Just that, “Second, my friend, how are you doing?”

I remember going to the bank one day. I’d shaved and put on my best collared shirt, sat at the desk before the branch manager, my good friend as we filled out a wire transfer form. There had been something itching my chest. I reached in below my shirt and pulled out a baby gecko, about an inch and half long and threw him on the desk. My friend reached for a three by five card, opened the desk drawer and scooped the gecko into it. Closing the door, he smiled at me, “Geckos good,” he said. We finished our business and I left the bank thinking, yes, except when they get bigger and poop on your best clothes stored in the closet for special occasions like going to the bank.

To swim with dolphins in the open ocean is an odd experience. 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 to breath and 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, the captain will slow the boat, the dolphins will begin circling the boat, leaping out of the water, checking you out, as if asking how come you slowed down? 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. They won’t stay around long, if the boat isn’t moving, as I mentioned they have better things to do than goof around with handicapped fish. 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. The captain will put the boat back in gear, leaving you floating in the open ocean and take off after the pod. He’ll pick it up again and with the dolphins playing in the bow wake he’ll make a wide arching turn that finally ends on a course heading back for you. As the pod approaches you’ll first see the scout dolphins pass you by with a smile fifty yards in front of the boat and then the majority of the pod, thick school of two hundred pound dolphins threading their way around you, the boat cruises by to the side and the trailing dolphins… It is as if they are happy to see you again. Repeat as desired. Giant figure eight course crossing where swimmers are located is recommended.


The naturalists say the animals and plants here fall within four categories: Endemic, meaning they’re native and unique in the world to this area. Native, meaning they’re indigenous, but exist else where in the world. Introduced, meaning someone brought them here on purpose or otherwise and invasive, meaning not only did they not get here on their own, but that they’re having a negative impact on the species that already exist here. So how would you classify man in the Galapagos? Native? Introduced? Invasive? One interpretation of the Gaia theory would say we’re natural, our cruise ships are natural, our decimation of species for economic reasons natural. Sometimes I think the best evidence in favor of the Gaia theory is that we’re too stupid to be anything but natural. Of course there are those other theories having to do with extra terrestrials. They stopped by island earth a few thousand years ago and a couple of feisty monkeys escaped from their ship. That then would clearly put us in the invasive category.

There was a betting pool on when Bere would “give the light” (have the kid). I had May 32nd. February has a 29th day every four years, but if our son was born on May 32nd, it would be the only May 32nd in the entire millennium.

Bere spent the last five months of her pregnancy in Quito, because it was just too hot here. Her fingers and toes swelled up like sausages. She couldn’t sleep. I’d been flying back and forth to visit as the creation of our travel Galapagos green business would allow. We talked on the phone a lot. She’d put the phone up to her belly and I’d talk to the kid, tell him we were really looking forward to having him around. Bere said he always kicked when he heard my voice. I probably would to if someone put a megaphone up the peaceful womb I was enjoying.

Finally we were together to wait for her to “give the light” (have the child) and we took a baby class. It was about actually having them and what to do with them once they come out. I’d never really thought that much about: how to get the clothes on the damn thing, wash it, burp it, hold it, feed it, an untold number of things. There were maybe ten couples in the class and whenever I looked around the room, they were either just beaming smiles, I mean stupidly glowing after the doctor made a joke about the people who save the umbilical cord end to show their kid later on in life. That was news to me, kids come with part of their umbilical cord sticking out of their stomach and you have to keep it clean and then one day it just falls off! Those that were smiling looked positively dotty, those that weren’t had either the expression of someone who’s in the back seat of a car that has just stalled on the railroad tracks in front of an onrushing train and their door is one of those child safety doors or their eyes were squinted, as if the squinting of eyes allows a deeper penetration of knowledge and this specific knowledge will somehow determine their survival for the next twenty years or, they looked completely, absurdly, stupendously, absolutely bored. After our first class I wondered what kind of expression I’d been wearing until riding home in the back of the taxi cab, I realized the muscles of my face were sore, apparently from trying to make my cheeks touch my eye balls.

Everyone asked, to the point of I developed a short hand answer to the question, “Where are you going to have the baby?” “In the taxi, of course!”

Bere’s family lives about a half hour outside Quito and one day I was in Colonial Quito scouting out hotels when I received a call from Bere, she said we had a doctor’s appointment at 3:30. We'd just been there the day before. Not to worry, she said.

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So I finished up my list of hotels and met her in time to make the appointment. I figured we go and the doctor would say, “Yeah, all is normal. Call me when something is really up.” The information we’d received in our course about babies was that before you have them the water breaks or you get contractions at intervals that grow closer. Bere didn't have any of those indications. So we're in the doctor's office and he's doing his invasive investigations, a cardiogram for the kid. I'm there with Bere’s mom and sister. The Doctor looks at me and says, "Looks like you're going to be a father today. I want to do a caesarian within the next ninety minutes."

This is the land of caesarians. Almost half of all hospital births are caesarian. There's the conspiracy theory, the doctors make more money and it takes less time. There's the “anellado” theory, the rich who can afford hospitals don't have the patience or the guts to go through the normal birthing process. Our kid, wasn't "slotted" right. Something to do with his head not being in the birthing canal and Bere was now having very painful, though irregular contractions.

So I get all scrubbed up wondering what kind of third world botch job I was about to witness, wondering if we're being robbed and feeling about “how” powerless. Bere's on the table all doped up, but conscious and they're cutting her open like an autopsy of a beached whale. They end up wrestling/ripping this thing out of her stomach. I'm watching it all. It's a little purple head and upper body with this half inch thick cord wrapped around its neck, its waist and feet still inside Bere. "Ah, here's our problem," the doctor says as he unwraps it once and then gasps as he has to unwrap a second turn of it and then a third which was around the abdomen. I was suddenly grateful for their predilections to cesareans.


In total Bere's labor lasted less than an hour. Our son was born two hours and twenty-eight minutes after our "Doctor's appointment". Roland Robert Schleicher Norris. 9 lbs. 20 and one half inches long. The biggest new born they've seen at the hospital. Born at 5:58 PM on May thirty-sixth (June Fifth), 2007. The family's calling him Rony or Robby, I'm calling him Erey (“R”) or Senor Babas (Mr. Spittle). We were in the finest hospital in Ecuador, the three of us there for three days. Total bill for everything, all the various doctors, etc, etc. $2,873.42. In Ecuador you can’t sue for mal practice.

At the US Embassy, in order to get travel documents for Erey I needed to prove that I’d been in the US in the past few years. My current passport and driver’s license were not enough. I had brought with me, just for this occasion: the title to our house in the US, the truck, the LLC papers for our company, personal and company bank statements, health insurance papers, an original copy of my birth certificate and the big gun in my mind, a current credit report with a 768 average. Not good enough. What I needed, what this gal wanted was school transcripts or tax returns. Nothing else mattered. One very busy day and night later I had a book of scanned and e-mailed documents, starting with my grade school transcripts. I passed the first leaf through the slotted window, I was gonna bury this gal in paper. She looked at my first grade report card and said, “Pay over there, then sit down and wait.”

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 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). 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, 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.