Underwhelmed and overtaxed in the Galapagos

Helen: Wish I didn´t get so excited about things, like C, as then I wouldn´t get so disappointed when they didn´t turn out as I expected. I´ve seen so many pictures of the Galapagos in National Geographic and learned so much about Darwin at University, that I was really looking forward to the Galapagos. It´s really not that great though. Oddly, we keep meeting other tourits who say this is the highlight of their trip or the best holiday ever. We can only assume that they haven´t spent any time in the Caribbean or Africa or Asia for that matter - there are so many places we´ve been where the wildlife is more accesssible (even in Panama, just outside the marina we saw monkeys in the wild). And other places are cheaper!! It´s v expensive here - I´d like to believe that´s becuase everything has to be imported, and also becuase the money they raise by taxing and overcharging tourists is reinvested into the protection of the national park. C on the other hand is more cynical. He thinks the whole thing is an elaborate money extraction exercise, based on the reputation of the Galapagos and the fact that they have a captive market. Maybe he´s right. Although they don´t need any more tourists. They don´t have enough water for the ones they´ve got. Or enough fresh fruit and veg for the locals. It´s v v hard to find fresh produce here, so most people (locals included) eat out for every meal. Which explains why they´re so fat. They women at least - our guide for our mountain trek told us that only the men play sports. They women just watch TV and have babies. They don´t seem to grow much here - only one of the islands has fresh water - but they do get lots of rain, and the highlands are pretty lush, so we can´t help wondering why everything is imported. Hmmmm

But, it´s not all bad. We met up with a Swedish friend who we met in Panama; we´ve been snorkelling, and seen a sting ray (no seals though - they´re always in the water just before and just after we are in the water, but never at the same time! We also missed out on sharks, but I´m inclined to think that´s actually a good thing!); and we climbed a volcano on Tuesday. It was a very bleak landsacape with amazing colours (red, black, orange, yellow, white, green from the ferns that were growing in the craters and blue from the sky). We were lucky that we had the whole place to ourselves - just me, C and our 2 guides (could´ve done the walk no worries by ourseleves, but you must have a guide - see above, money extraction). Because we had decided to camp, we started out a lot later than the groups of tourists who trek up the hill on horses. They were all coming down as we were going up. They seemed to have guides who spoke good English - ours didn´t. At first I wished Carla and Cesar had spoken better English and known more about the geology/wildlife of the area - but C said it would have made him feel like he´d been on a school field trip, and, actually, having to try to speak Spanish was really good for us. We camped with them and the two national park guards that evening and sat around in their hut chatting (well, attempting to chat). A much more ´local´ experience than we would have had if we had gone with a large organised tour. (We weren´t expecting to find the guards at the campsite, and had packed for being in the wilderness - the guides and guards offered to let us cook in their well appointed kitchen, but C insisted on using his camping stove outside. They all came out to have a look - I´m not sure if they were impressed or bemused by the clouds of billowing deisel smoke!)

Right, that´s enough for now. For anyone who´s interested we´ve seen penguins, rays, blue-footed boobys, seals, giant tortoises (v v cute) and marine iguanas. So that´s a big TICK for Galapagos as C would say. Going to try to find some fresh produce and stock up on deisel and water and should be leaving for the Marquesas on Saturday.

Hx