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theloniousbach · 10 months ago

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THE GALAPAGOS CHRONICLES

#1–Mid-day, Friday, 8 March 2024

Had all gone to plan, we would be in Miami at this point about 1/3 of the way into a 10 hour layover waiting for our flight to Quito that will get in at a projected 23:21. We were slated to leave at 5:30 am. Ugh. 10 hour layover, also ugh.

I went to sleep at 7 am, planning to get up at 1 to get to campus at 2 with an AppleWatch on my wrist and my phone on the bedside table. I took the phone off at 11 when I kept getting alerts. Young people communicating, right. Nope. I didn’t go back to sleep but at 1 when I did get out of bed and get my glasses I found out the flight had been bumped to 8:30 to 12:30. It’s currently 12:50.

So maybe 2 1/2 hours more and easily to the St Louis Airport for a breakfast of fish and chips conversing with Sam who is usually the one on the phone at the airport in the middle of part one of a still very long day in airports.

I have been too focused on the getting there to have it really sink in that I will be in South America andin the Southern Hemisphere, (near the Equator near the Equinox and at Quito’s 2850 meters/9350 feet in altitude, I am going to be as close to the sun as I will have ever been) for the first time. Above all, at a Darwin shrine like Down and Westminster Abbey.. But all that’s beginning to sink in.

Still it will be a late night and an earlyish morning (8 am) tomorrow and stupid early morning (5!?!, w-t-pickaletter) on Sunday for the flight into the Galapagos.

#1.5–Early Evening, Friday, 8 March 2024

I am not, as I might have thought, at this moment boarding a plane in Miami. I will not, as I might have thought, after an 18 hour day (with the asterisk that it was going to be a 21 hour day) gone to sleep in Quito. My 13 hour day in airports was “only” 8 hours.

We did spend 90ish minutes on the plane though. But the mechanical problem that delayed us could not be resolved. Even had we gone out at the 4 pm time they projected as we got off the plane, we would have missed the connection in Quito.

So we have been “delayed” not cancelled until 7 am tomorrow.

I sleep in my own bed, at least until 3 am. Poor Ellen has to drive us to the airport again when it’s dark. She gives up seeing knitting friends.

I think we will “only” have a 14 hour day tomorrow. We won’t see Quito to any real extent. And we are out of our hotel there at 5 am (sleeping in!) for the flight to the Galapagos on Sunday.

There isn’t an upbeat photo for this entry and GC #2 won’t be that picturesque either.

But I will be as relieved as excited to see the Galapagos on Sunday.

#2 in part—Saturday, 9 March 2024, 7:30 pm EST, Miami Airport

We are awaiting the arrival of the aircraft to take us to Quito which will depart 1.5 hours late. Due in at 12:46 am. I imagine I’ll be checked in by 2 am. We are due to be picked up for the run to the airport to get to the Galapagos at 5 am. I will be napping on the plane, but this will be the third night in a row of disrupted sleep after a week of just being excited/anxious.

But we got to the airport in St Louis at 9:15 am, time used to get the airline to enter things in the system so we could get through TSA and eat. Gyros for breakfast BUT the American Airlines food voucher didn’t work.

We got on the plane on time and even pushed back from the gate mostly on time. We sat on the tarmac for a little less than an hour over Spring Break congestion and, more importantly, weather in Florida.

We got to Miami’s jammed and hopping airport in plenty of time too much of which I devoted to waiting for a chicken burrito. But I ate—and I will try to sleep en route to Quito.

Yikes.

Day 2, Part 2–EuroBuilding Hotel, Quito, 3:15 am

It would appear that writing takes precedence over sleep as I may not have much electronics on the Galapagos. My phone will be a clock and a camera at least. I can probably add to the Google doc I am curating these on but posting them will be iffy.

We’re to be down in the lobby at 4:30 for transport to the airport for the flight to the islands. What we have gotten out of this hotel is showers and a chance to rearrange things. I’m using the WiFi for a tic.

We get to stay on the islands, not a tourist boat, because we are a Webster class with USFQ collaborators. I slept on the plane for a decent stretch, but I am pulling an all nighter. When I was their age, I didn’t do that. My experience with adult insomnia makes this bearable, but that I’ve had that licked as a general rule these past several years and particularly months makes this a challenge.

However my mantra is an unvoiced “I’m not too old for this shit.” :|| and a commitment to be a good Kansan because home on that range, never is heard a discouraging word.

Day 3–Casa de Nelly, San Christobal Island, 2:00 pm local time, feeling like 8 pm

We’re here and it is finally real. If I also wrote rather than sleep during my short hotel interlude, I spent valuable minutes being excited.

Seeing the likes of this between our welcome luncheon spot (freshly caught tuna in a pasta) and our hotel is simply amazing.

I am writing again instead of sleeping during nap time, but I don’t know I’d get up until midnight if I did sleep. So I’ll ride the excitement and wonder.

It’s rainy and that isn’t stopping us and we will be out in an hour for a hike, rain or no rain. We have settled into the hotel and had an orientation from our host institution as well as the meal with the last of the forced march of airports and airplanes behind us in the morning. But it felt like a full day at 10:30 am when we landed.

97% of the archipelago is national park and the population supports that and the ecotourism it fosters. We however are passersby, not tourists, semi-official under the aegis of Universidad de San Francisco de Quito which shares Webster University’s service to underserved populations, in this case Galapagoans who, if they left for education rarely came back.

We are definitely in the tropics and in the underdeveloped world, but it’s a different kind of underdevelopment with that as pristine as possible 97% and an upscale ness for the tourists. But we’re not typical tourists expecting suburban America. But I am now very curious about the natives.

But we’ll get out of their world tomorrow and into what makes this special. With some more food and some reasonable sleep and I’ll be able to meet it more than half way.

Day 3 Coda—Casa de Nelly, Monday, 11 March 2024, 6 am

Do not be alarmed by the hour. It is 7 am back home and I SLEPT for 8.5 hours, not unbroken but that doesn’t happen. Indeed, though I am not too old for this shit, I am feeling my age, lagging in the pack and ending the wonderful collegial conversation over dinner early.

But slow and steady was well worth it for a magnificent hike out of the Interpretation Center behind the USFQ campus. We climbed to observation decks overlooking Darwin Bay where HMS Beagle landed and frigate birds soared around us, then down to near that bay and an odd statue of Darwin (head to small, him well past his age when he was here), and around to a beach which, in succession, required stepping over iguanas on the path, frigate birds perched but 12 feet above us in a tree, and a sea lion which started to waddle up to one of the retreating students.

No pictures as my phone was in the hotel drying out from an inadvertent quick dip in a puddle. It wouldn’t charge but sitting for six hours in my air conditioned room worked the necessary magic. So I’ll have visual evidence today of a hike to a waterfall, a tortoise refuge, and a beach.

Walking back from dinner, there were sea lions on the sidewalks, as if they were sleeping rough, as the British would put it.

It’s all amazing. And that was through sleep exhausted eyes.

Day 4–Casa de Nelly, Monday, 11 March 2024, back from dinner

I have just posted the pictures of the sea lion pups hanging out near the Darwin/HMS Beagle statue on the boardwalk in town. My colleagues were heading to continue a wonderful conversation begun over ceviche mixto and, to try next time, shrimp in a coconut sauce when we saw them. We had ventured forth in a remarkable cloud burst which gave my rain coat and beach shoes good use.

I didn’t have said beach shoes during our chance to frolic in the water. I cooled off too but lost my sunglasses in the waves so I headed back to our area which we shared with a sea lion on one of the benches. I would have added a photo of him/her but previous attempts have failed. Still it was a refreshing end of that part of the excursion part of the day.

We started in the highlands with a hike to El Junco Lagoon, the islands sole body of fresh water. It was too misty to take advantage of its vistas of the other side of the island, so it was another steep climb. I think there were gradients that were of interest but I lagged behind and didn’t hear explanations. But it is all quite remarkable.

It was even mistier on our way climb back up to retrace our steps back to town after the beach. The middle of the day included the breeding center for tortoises for which I have posted pictures of them and two different videos of the same beast walking quite briskly onto the path and then towards and past me. Absolutely fascinating and the definite high point of a stunning day and perhaps the entire week.

But snorkeling lies ahead tomorrow and the adventures will continue. So I’m willing to give those activities fair consideration in comparison to the tortoise.

Day 5–Back at Casa de Nelly after small boat/snorkeling (!?!) excursion to Isla Lobos, Tuesday, 12 March 2024, 2 pm

Our official day is over after a four and a half hour boat trip along the shore of San Christobal to a small, calm bay near Isla Lobos. We saw these blue footed boobies, frigate birds including males with big red pouches, a huge manta ray, and countless sea lions.

I was generally timid staying in the back of the boat and not climbing up top. I did snorkel though I held onto a life preserver and was towed by the guide. I don’t know how much my occasional paddling with my flippers helped. I also wore a life jacket. But I kept my head in the water and breathed through my mouth through the tube. Our guide said to do yogic breathing, for efficiency and to avoid panic, so I’m glad I had that in my arsenal.

Others swam to a beach after lunch and came back even after rain came up. Our trip back to town was in a steady but pleasant rain. So it has been a watery day.

The class will be meeting shortly, but I will let them conduct their business and rest. Quiet will be worthwhile.

Day 5 coda—Casa de Nelly, Tuesday, 12 March 2024 after dinner

I take crap selfies but I took ones with the two sculptures of Charles Darwin along the waterfront in town.

It has finally struck me here with the students that, unlike these images and even the ones at the Interpretive Center, way closer at 26 to their age than the older famous man depicted here. He was at loose ends. He graduated from Cambridge at 22 and takes a gap year that lasts about 5. He doesn’t know what he wants to do, except it ain’t what the expectations other have for him.

When he’s our leader’s age, he’s polishing and repolishing the big book Natural Selection of which On the Origin of Species is the condensed version and which serves as source notebooks for many of his subsequent books, the one long argument. And, yikes, when he’s my age, he’s got four years to live.

Still I identify with Darwin in this very limited sense. I’m on this expedition in an odd role. I am seen as one of the professors by the “crew,” but, bless them, they are amiable and tolerant and good natured. On the boat today, the recreation director put on a playlist from her phone that included a much higher percentage of songs I recognized—and more than a few I actually liked. I’m confident I wasn’t being patronized, though perhaps I was taken into account.

It’s a fascinating place, truly a laboratory of evolution. Because it was only in retrospect that Darwin recognized that, he is appropriately an afterthought around here. I would like to get a cap with some Darwin reference, but that’s not part of the souvenir trade. And that’s probably about right.

Days 6-8–Casa de Nelly, Friday, 15 March 2024, after breakfast

Yesterday was a lost day for the students as their data collection was rained out and for me as I had/have a full blown case of what I’m calling Fitzroy’s Revenge, thinking it better to punch up on Darwin’s benefactor/nemesis than on some Inca leader and certainly not the inappropriate Aztec leader whom Yanquis all to readily blame.

I spent about 18 hours in bed sleeping intermittently and moving to the bano more frequently and urgently. I missed out on two celebratory meals but no excursions. I continue to take it easy and will be seriously medicated as we fly to Guayaquil and on to Quito this afternoon. But I am doing better.

Besides Fitzroy, do I blame the pork soup on Wednesday’s lunch or the cheese empanada/ceviche for dinner that day or the rinsing of my toothbrush from the tap? I regret being puny, but folks have taking fine care of me.

I spent a couple of hours in town helping a couple of students getting in one set of observations of sea lions, but then a serious rain came up and our leader called it for everybody as it might well have been worse in the park.

Wednesday afternoon was also called off as we couldn’t get to Finca Guadalupe so that was quiet though I didn’t nap as perhaps I should have. Instead I reread the fruits of my predecessor as a supernumerary on a previous trip with students. Paul Stroble absorbed all the wondrous things we see and created a poetry collection called “Galapagos Joy.” I’ve read it before, maybe even in manuscript form and certainly before this trip. But reading it here with my own mental images reinforcing Paul’s insights was quite special.

Days 8-10–Hotel Cumbaya, Sunday, 17 March, 2024,5:30 pm (almost bedtime)

In addition to Fitrzroy, I evidently pissed off Bishop Wilberforce and Richard Owen too as, to not bury the lede, I was released at midday after at least 36 hours of attention from Quito’s teaching Hospital de Los Valles where they rehydrated me and infused me with antibiotics and various under wonder drugs, including a sleep aid that let me have 6 1/2 hours sleep.

I came in very puny, shivering in part because I did what I could twice to clean my pants. I’ve got some schtick here because of course I do, but let’s just leave it at that.

It was quite comfortable really with excellent care from remarkably good natured staff who used Google Translate with me quite effectively. I had extremely limited electronics (phone, not iPad) but could turn iMessages into texts home to Ellen who passed things on to Sam. But, particularly or even at diminished levels, my brain is an okay place spend time in. I’ve certainly put lots of things in there, so I opened a few boxes. And I listened to a NYTimes Duke Ellington playlist and one of ballads from Blue Note albums that the label distributed..

They kept asking if I was nauseated. Well, except for when my wet boots came out of the suitcase and smelled like sea lions, no. Evidently what I do instead is respond to the burbling below by getting hiccups which come and go. Annoying enough but not nausea.

Poor Ellen with Sam felt helpless. So did I but I don’t think there was anything to do. I actually can advocate for myself, but I am grateful to Nicole Miller-Struttmann who was a bulldog, even though I am no Darwin. There are rescheduling and administrative logistics that I would muddle through if I were at full strength. Our USFQ contact Pieter was good company and even did my laundry which was huge. Mara and Gabriel from USFQ also saved my sorry ass.

At Ellen’s insistence, I’m pampering myself by flying business class and may well use a wheel chair in Miami. Old Jewish guy in a wheel chair? I think if I can work on my entitlement during the business class time, I may just fit in.

I posted a picture from lunch overlooking Quito. It was good to be on my feet and to have some food I wanted to eat. It’s stayed in me just fine thought I’ve mostly hiccuped since. I did not walk around the artisanal market where Nicole got some gifts for kiddos.

Some of our Webster kiddos have landed in St Louis, but many including Steph Schroeder are flying out perhaps even after us. Since they aren’t on this platform they won’t know to be on the lookout for a particular entitled old Jewish guy in a wheelchair in the MIami airport.

Days 10-11, 16-17 March 2024, Quito

I teach about place, inspired conceptually by JB Jackson, including his impact on Edgar Anderson and John Stillgoe, among others. Vernacular architecture, landscape, communities and the very buildings all contain the subtlest of cues about the culture that shaped and is shaped by that place.

Once sprung from the hospital, I had about 12 hours in the town itself, some of it spent sleeping—or trying to. Even then, I had the sounds of the street distracting and intriguing me as I listened to the community of Cumbaya wind down.

After dropping bags off at the Hotel Cumbaya in the community of that same name and near the USFQ campus, we climbed up from the valley to that wonderful restaurant where we looked down on the old bullfight arena and the magnificent old Cathedral and a panorama of the old town and its expansion. It was a two lane road with some winding, not crowded for a Sunday afternoon, but evidently the only way up. Undoubtedly it’s crowded during the week. But one imagines there’s a resignation to the circumstances. Other roads are crowded, especially by US standards, and not relentlessly efficient. Drivers dodge around one another and there has to be a driving culture but it seems more cheerful than, say, the LA Freeway.

At 2:30 am, we tapped on our cabbie’s window and he awoke to take us to the airport along those now empty highways. There are a hodgepodge of businesses close to the road, more industrial than commercial, on the basis of their meager parking areas. It’s a car culture, but somehow not a parking one. People use cars but we maintain the places for ourselves. At least in old Cumbaya the streets are fairly narrow. Cars are one tool among many, not the essential Swiss Army knives we make them.

But they are used, including into the night, or at least passed dark when a weary and still ill traveler needing to arise at 2 am tried to sleep. So too is there a street life with young people, mostly men, hanging out and laughing amiably. It all seemed so good natured that I couldn’t justly complained.

It’s a capital in the Global South, much poorer than it could and certainly should be, but in the areas where the likes of me went, it seems not grindingly so. It was not as bad as I feared and was prepared to see. On the broad boulevards there are the signs of Norteamericano brands and consumerism. Tommy Hilfiger, I heard, specifically did not design for these brown people and yet they embrace his brands, maybe confounding and challenging the insult but nonetheless putting money in the racist’s pocket. Consumerism always wins.

But, at first, it seems an unlikely place to build a city. It is a daunting task and that it was done so long ago prompts even more admiration for the ingenuity of those people. But it was a sacred place, the capital of first Los Quitos who lost out to the Incas who lost out to the Spanish who lost out briefly and partially to the Ecuadoreans who use the US dollar as their currency. Thus it’s profaned, but once it was sacred and significant as a key spot on route from the Andes to the Amazon. As impressive as the peaks are, it’s the valleys that were rich in agriculture. The mining is now limited, but those resources are directly from the geological richness.

It is an unlikely place to build a city because it is 2850 meters in elevation. They may use American money, decimal based as it is, but not our other ludicrous measures. So that’s 9350 feet. It being so very near the Equator, so very near the Equinox, and so very elevated, I was as close to the sun as I ever will be or maybe ever could be. I got enough sun at lunch to be surprised and felt that warmth as I tried to sleep. I was not up for any walking around (I sat in the car and watched people go into the artisanal market), but I felt the altitude and there was a pressure on my chest that lifted only in the plane and then back at near sea level in Miami.

There is a large statue—of St Gabriel, I’m told—overlooking the old town. The bull fight arena and Cathedral are the most impressive representations of the Colonial era but the surroundings are, undoubtedly at ground level, able to tell even more about those days.

But unencumbered by such details, I can tell myself wide ranging stories. With only slightly more visual facts about the few other parts of the city that I saw, I nonetheless have this indelible and precious image of Quito.

Day 12–18 March 2024, Quito>Miami>St Louis

We were at Quito Airport by 3 am and at the gate in plenty of time even for me to be taken down in a wheelchair to security to look at the bottles of electrolytes in my packed bag. They passed muster though I would have been happy enough to have them confiscated then. It would have saved me from throwing them away in Miami.

Blech! I had found some mango nectar which was much better but still not as sweet as in the US. I bought another one for the road but didn’t drink it and so had to give it up in Miami too. But mangos are a gift and I have frozen fruit bars among my at home comfort food.

E bought me Business Class seats to Miami at quite a pretty penny. I’m glad I’m married by now to someone who’s rich as it was valuable above all to have a bano nearby and shared among a much smaller pool. Otherwise, it was a lot to pay for a warm wash cloth, omelette, orange juice, a couple of cups of tea, and a glass of water (yes, a glass and silverware too), and leg room. I’m old enough to remember pre-cattle car days when at least the leg room and food with silverware were more accessible. Of course there was a smoking section.

But such extortion is common. One of our students bought a ticket on a plane he was flying standby. He paid the ransom, just as we did—and the airline benefits from being incompetent. They had delayed, not canceled, our outbound flight, so that they were liable only for some $12 meal vouchers (mine didn’t work). The bulk of our party couldn’t take off from Quito for “weather” reasons—given the temperature the filled to the brim plane, maximizing filled seats, couldn’t get the needed lift. That delay led to them missing their connection (a couple of students had the door close in their face) and several different subsequent improvisations—the buying of the ticket to get on the standby flight, flying a different airline, different standbys with the last of us getting home 48 hours after plan. I was not the last one home, so my suggestion next time is to spend 36 hours in the hospital as a way to expedite one’s travel.

I was with our group leader who, besides taking wonderful care of me, was navigating the bureaucracy for all. It seems that we got hammered by the administrative inflexibility of non-refundable group tickets that required the University’s travel agency being in charge but that office not being around on the weekend. What was meant to be an economy measure probably cost more between the hotel rooms etc.

I am planning a Spring Break trip for next year. It won’t entail going through Miami and it won’t be going to the tropics, but, particularly, right now, I’m not exactly sure if I could handle all the logistics on top of the teaching. I might well have a Webster colleague along anyway, but I might just smuggle along one or both of the other ruthlessly efficient organizers that we Kleindorfs are.

I expected, as I’d written before, to have used wheel chairs in Miami Airport, but I made it through Customs and all the various lines and just kept going. The final indignity was that just before boarding time they shifted our gate from D40 to D15, so off we highstepped it, me too. Still somehow I made it on time and managed back home in steerage with my gut compliant.

It was 80 degrees in Miami and 40 in St Louis. E met us at the gate with coats and we got ourselves home.

Finally.

A veteran traveler and keen observer of how things really work commented on a previous post. I agree that it’s not just this airline. A friend was bumped back into the main cabin as they probably sold her upgrade out from under her. I’ve had Southwest Airlines meltdown on me a couple of times. United is in the news with some problems, including, I think, near collisions on the ground. And I went to the airport expecting to get to London a dozen years and having to turn around.

He writes:

“I’ve flown on most US airlines, and many foreign airlines in the course of business, government work, and personal. I fly a lot even now. I know of no American airline where your most recent adventure in flying couldn’t happen. It was bad before the Covid interregnum, awfully bad during it, and is worse now. Not enough pilots, not enough maintenance staff, overworked air traffic controllers working an technologically obsolete air traffic control system, serious crew shortages, supply chain problems for parts, and more. I’ve lost track of stories as bad and worse than what you just went through. Having said that, it’s not every time. For every trip with some sort of problem or delay, the next one will leave on time and arrive on time. It’s a crap shoot.”

I thank him for these insights as he delineates all the reasons and is right in taking a big step back. From that vantage point, the indignities of any particular fiasco have a context. But that context is that the system for systemic reasons isn’t working. Airline travel serves a relatively privileged layer (one of our students hadn’t ever flown before). We may not be able to get from Tokyo to the Super Bowl on private planes, but we have more opportunities to travel than, I would guess, the cab driver who slept in his vehicle waiting to take us to the Quito Airport. The system isn’t reliable for our layer.

It hasn’t been reliable for the likes of that cabdriver around even more important things like health and education for a long time.

Conclusion/s

Was it worth it? Though a reasonable question, I answer with an emphatic yes.

It’s true that my active Galapago-ing was from midday Sunday (shaky from lack for sleep for two days) to the rain out Thursday late morning (with illness coming on. Those four days compare to another four devoted to travel and three of being pretty sick. And there are hospital costs and the Business Class extortion. The money, I have the luxury of saying, is secondary.

I have indulged indentifying with Charles Darwin throughout, in particular as a supernumerary with peculiar interests. I heard the kids expressed concern for their historian just as the HMS Beagle crew called Darwin Philosopher. They were wonderful, welcoming, and exciting in their interests and curiosities. Observing them in a boundaried but not detached way was the first acquisition. We all went through so much together.

But Darwin’s time on the boat was a consistent misery of seasickness and he spent as much time ashore as possible. But, without minimizing that suffering, he knew that whatever suffering he endured the wonders of what he saw was worth it. Me too.

The beach near but not, I guess, at Darwin Bay is, I realize, the most spectacular memory. On Day 3, I wrote, “…around to a beach which, in succession, required stepping over iguanas on the path, frigate birds perched but 12 feet above us in a tree, and a sea lion which started to waddle up to one of the retreating students.” Add the absolutely genuine jawdropping joy of one of the most bird-loving but distant students at the frigate birds was special.

I had a tortoise walk right along the path by me and at a good clip too. The tortoises were charismatic and specific to their refuge.

I wasn’t ill but I was waning as the full crew marched over volcanic rocks to a peak at La Loberia. But I got an hour of watching the crash of Pacific waves that will more than tide me over until looking at Great Lakes over the summer. Waves are a great joy and I got them.

I was assigned to the sea lion researchers and I enjoyed seeing them then and during my walks downtown. It is odd to be rather complacent about such magnificent animals. Indeed, I’ll say it again, my wet boots smelled like them and, in the hospital, that was the closest to being nauseated as I got. Interestingly, I get hiccups when there are rumbles in my gut that cause the diaphragm to spasm. It is they who are my example of the extreme lack of fear among this fauna.

And I snorkeled! Sure I was dragged but I saw urchins and rays and eels and spectacular fish. I managed all that. And the boat ride brought us near blue footed boobies and frigate birds. Being on the water has to be part of the island experience.

I enjoyed the ceviches and the grilled fish, but for now those remain suppressed memories. The fresh fruit juices were nice for not being over sweetened to US tastes. But for now food memories are, I’m afraid, fraught.

I got into the Southern Hemisphere at least a little. Quito and the Andes are now real in my mind as are examples of what imperialist exploitation has wrought.

At the moment, I feel pretty old—and I don’t like it. But I’m not too old for this shit. I wouldn’t do this specific thing again as that would be stupid. But I have no regrets whatsoever.

#2024 #travel #galapagos

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