First glimpse of Ecuador from the window of my plane.
Maybe it was our traffic-laws-are-optional cab driver. Or the way the streets all tumbled and twisted around one another, navigating neighborhoods that crawled up hillsides and then stopped suddenly, as if the jungle had not completely surrendered its hold on this place. But the word that kept popping into my head when I first arrived in Quito was freedom. Just a small taste of this vibrant mountain metropolis spurred my desire to break the borders of my West Coast American bubble, to see the world with fresh eyes like this again and again.
My friend Craig has been teaching in Quito, Ecuador, for the past year, and he invited me to join him and his girlfriend, Miriam, on a trip to the Galapagos Islands. Several other teachers from his school came along as well. Craig and Miriam were fantastic hosts. I was endlessly impressed by Craig’s fluent Spanish–he handled interactions with cab drivers, pizza delivery men, and even a confused elderly woman in his apartment elevator with the ease of a native speaker. And Miriam saved me from a fatal encounter with the equatorial sun when she pointed out that I was using after-sun lotion, not sunscreen. So even though this trip might sound like an ambitious way to spend Spring Break, the company of these seasoned South American adventurers made things much easier for me than they might have been.
A street in Quito. Famous statue of an angel caps the hill in the background.
In some ways, the beauty of the Galapagos Islands is a story better told with pictures than with words (check out Craig’s online photo collection). I’ll mention just a few highlights. After we landed at the tiny Baltra airport, we took a boat across a little channel to Santa Cruz Island and hopped on a bus. We stopped off on the way to our hotel to check out some giant tortoises (which apparently just wander freely across wide swaths of the island). And they were indeed GIANT tortoises. When our guide first said we were going to go look for tortoises, I thought we would have to search around a bit, but they were about as stealthy as lawnmowers, hauling their massive 400-pound-plus carapaces through the underbrush with awkward, thudding steps. We were able to get just about as close as we wanted to, though they sometimes hissed like snakes if you got too cozy.
Seeing these otherworldly animals in the middle of otherwise unremarkable greenery set the tone for my stay on the Islands: I would sometimes forget that I was somewhere exotic and unique–Nature’s laboratory–until I found myself staring at something bizarre, beautiful, and strange.
A marine iguana takes to the water
A few more examples. On our second day, we went snorkeling around the tiny island of Bartolome, and I saw sea lions, Galapagos penguins, and a 3-foot-plus white-tip shark. White-tips aren’t aggressive, but this one still had a distinctly shark-like look to it, if you know what I mean, and it was a weird thrill to swim within a couple feet. It felt totally unreal, like I was watching a 3-D movie about oceans at the science center. I had the same feeling when I swam underwater with a turtle near Isabella Island the next day. The turtle was only a couple feet away. It hovered above the ocean floor on its four green wings like a graceful underwater zeppelin (though when it started eating fish, I saw things from their perspective for a moment, and the peaceful zeppelin turned into a malevolent fish-gobbling spaceship).
The crater was too large to fit into the frame of a single photo.
We saw the second largest volcanic crater in the world, Isabella Island’s Sierra Negra, then hiked over to the smaller Chico volcano, where our guide pointed out holes in the ground that were venting hot air and steam from the magma just below the surface. Feeling that hot, wet air rising from the rocky ground gave me a strong impression of the Earth as a living, breathing thing (this was not, however, the volcano that actually did erupt on the islands a few days later: that was La Cumbre, which we did not visit). On Isabella we also saw blue-footed boobies. The name of these birds has inspired countless T-shirts sold to tourists on Santa Cruz, all in varying degrees of poor taste. But when I actually saw the birds, corny puns were the last thing on my mind; all I could think about was those feet. I didn’t know that nature had that particular color of blue in its palette. And why just the feet? No doubt another one of the mysteries that fascinated Darwin during his stay on the Islands.
Sea lions like to commandeer abandoned ships in the marina.
The natural wonders were almost beyond belief. But I still wonder what I will actually recall most vividly about this trip in ten years. In remembrance, vacations often seem like time capsules for phases of life–little domes of memory glass over a particular time and self. The striking sights of a new place are only the surface of the memory: underneath is an internal snapshot, a sketch of my own consciousness at the time of the experience. I went to Maui in high school with my family, and I still remember the intense humidity of the air and the sunsets over the Pacific. But I have a much more visceral memory of being preoccupied with the absence of my girlfriend at the time. Before moving to Los Angeles permanently, I visited for a week with my Dad. I remember spending time with him. I also remember being fascinated by the classrooms of the teachers I visited and anxious to see if I could really do what they were doing. My impressions of the city itself are much hazier.
Craig, Miriam, and me on lava rock.
So I wonder what will really stick with me. I’m sure that for years to come I will still be able to see that sea turtle floating in front of me, sea-wings outstretched, mouth open wide for every passing fish. But I will also remember the person I was and the people who were with me. We all seemed to be on the brink of a new phase in our lives. One of the teachers from Colegio Menor is moving back to Memphis with his girlfriend next year. Another hopes to move to Italy and teach. Another is returning to his teaching position in Orange County. Miriam is moving from New York to Quito to teach sicence. And I’m off to Nagoya. Along with the powerful images of natural beauty, I think I might remember myself as young and restless, trying to come up with answers to that incessant “what next?” question–and surrounded by other people busy doing the same thing. Craig and I found some time to run and briefly revived what was once a weekly ritual for us. We talked about where we are and where we’re going, and these conversations, with their dramatic natural backdrop, were definitely my number one overall highlight from the trip.
I’ve been back in L.A. for a week now, spending most of my time with middle-schoolers and my Taurus, and this has been fine. The trip left a pleasant, lingering afterglow. My sunburns have all peeled, and I’ve settled back into L.A.’s freeway-work-freeway routine, but I still feel recharged and reinvigorated. I feel more free in my little Los Angeles bubble knowing that its walls are thin and the world beyond it is wide.
I thoroughly enjoyed your descriptions of the trip, Tim, and I think it’s fantastic that you were able to spend a week down there. Maybe Becky and I will be fortunate enough to make the trip to Ecuador before Craig and Miriam leave.
When do you head off to Japan? What an experience that is likely to be! I will have to follow some of it on your blog.
Best of luck.