There are some photos below, but a 50 photo gallery of my Galapagos trip can be found here. I will have an update on HM2 out within the next week max in this space. Basically this is coming late because it is hard to write long blog posts well while traveling and working. My turning made hands into bluffs quickie series has its first episode coming out on the 22nd and is 3 episodes. I think it is my best work yet and all you micro guys will enjoy it. The 22nd is also a Sunday so that should be pretty sweet as parts 2 and 3 will be out on Sundays as well with CR loading up the weekly content to start 2012. I am also just finishing up a 2 part 100nl series which should hopefully be out early March I imagine, depending what CR wants to do with scheduling. I think that's about it for clerical details, so without further ado...

Having waited twenty minutes with no expectation of a bus, I hopped in the back of one taxi not knowing when the next opportunity would be. The contrast was droll as we zipped off to Puerto. I could see a traveling family's tour guide inside the truck flicking through his iPod's catalogue of pristine flora and fauna photos, while two locals and I huddled on their luggage, zipping up and down hills at fifty kilometers per hour. It sure seemed as if it was the younger local's first ride in this circumstance, he was visibly cringing, crouching to avoid the wind. It seemed like good fun to me, but perhaps because it was to be my first and only, while his was a daily hell.

Naturally the cab driver, after delivering the family to their hotel, had never heard of the hostel I had booked online just days before. It was called Los Pinguinos, or the penguins, and wasn't on the tourist map I had received after disembarking. Asking him to drop me off in the middle of town I took to getting lunch, fresh fish, before looking up online just where exactly I was supposed to be. One issue was the dissonance between the internet's maps and mine. The brochure had names like Ferdinand, Isabella, and so on for streets, while Google had a simple grid, with helpful names like Sixth Street. In the real world of half-finished grey cement two stories and dirt roads, not a street sign was to be found.

It was a good thing I had left my big pack in Guayaquil; my load was just 13 kilos according to the airport's scales. It didn't take me too long to find the place; the city isn't that big, though it was on the rough edge of town. It wasn't a hostel either - it was a house with a bunch of penguins painted on the front gate. No mas, breakfast was good as were the hosts.

I was looking again at that beachfront sign, being a very strong swimmer an undertow is something I can handle, especially with two giant snorkelling fins. But despite seeing a few surfers brave the open waters I declined, remembering the gatekeeper's warning about the presence of sharks. The cove was supposedly sheltered from danger by rocks, coral, or something, I wasn't too sure. It is almost 7:30 now and I'm dropping trou and wading out into the shallow waters with my fins in hand. I was the third person on site, one was practicing yoga at the head of the path and the other asleep under a tree, had woke up and wandered off. Donning my mask and fins I made my way towards the far end of the cove.

On Monday I had seen snorkelers on the near side checking out the iguanas and the crabs. That was my finishing point in my preconceived circumnavigation. I saw little tropical fish of all colours and stripes. I passed over coral and seaweed, rocky banks to my right and murky shallows to my left. After about twenty minutes of lazy snorkeloping along the bank I came to a jutting crag forming the smallest of inlets. Here the water below got a bit deeper; I was after all heading out towards the ocean. Snorkeling is relaxation by way of constant distraction. A fish here a fish there, is that an eel? Just more seaweed. What's over that rocky outcrop, oops I kicked up the sand on the bottom again, I can't see. Fuck that is a giant sea turtle.

So maybe it was inevitable given the low visibility to which I was naturally limited that I would not be prepared for what happened next. In any case I distinctly remember being distracted by something, nothing in particular, on my right. When my view wandered back to my left there were, about five or six feet away, three sharks in a row beside me. They were going, lazily, at my speed. I didn't know what kind of sharks they were. But they weren't a size I was comfortable with, because they were my size. And there were three of them. I thought there were no sharks in the cove. I thought this was the safe area. Why was it safe again? What had the sign-in sheet man said...I didn't remember. Wasn't there a barrier, a reef, or a something? Why didn't I even look up what marine life to expect before I came out here? Who goes to the Galapagos Islands not researching all the species milling about? To be honest I was not calm in that moment. I had read somewhere that the hammerheads and the white tipped reef sharks were basically harmless to humans. These were brown sharks. I just didn't know.

The main thought I had was that I didn't want to be one of those people who, after reading the article of their unfortunate and all together avoidable demise, people inevitably remark to themselves "how could they be so stupid?" I did not want to be so stupid! I had just watched 127 hours on the bus ride from Lima to Guayaquil. I couldn't just turn right to the bank and be safe on land. The "bank" was insurmountable, sharp, lava-formed rocks, with mangroves intervening in the shallowest parts, their roots forming an underwater forest, passable only by fish that could fit through a four inch window. In turning right I was turning around, taking my eyes off the threatening vanguard. And there he was, bringing up the rear, not of their little line, but rather, of my rear, the fourth shark of the retinue. Looking up the name for a group of sharks of this type I came to understand it was "shiver," quite appropriate despite the warm waters. He was directly behind me, almost as if he had been following me. I wondered for how long. I wasn't that far out. I was further out than I realized. If I had to I could get to shore in minutes at top speed. But unlike say, an undercurrent, I knew that I had no chance of out swimming a motivated shark.

On Saturday, the day before I left, I had booked a day long tour to visit one of more beautiful spots in the chain, or so I was told. We toured Bartholomew, a recently formed (by geological standards at least) dormant volcano of an island. It was hot. But seeing such a raw geological formation, in terms of the lava flows, the craters, and the sharp edges that only a few eons of erosion affords, was pretty spectacular. The ground was a deep ochre, replete with sulphur, iron, and carbon. It was a landscape which could be mistaken for lunar in a black and white shot. The reward for our steep ascent of the main crater was snorkeling in the surrounding reefs.

In our group was a pair of Americans who had just spent months tagging the boobies of the remote and inaccessible Espanola, an island far off any tourist's itinerary. The scope of the project extended to the construction of a full hereditary genetic map (i.e. a reverse engineered family tree) of the island's non-migratory population. He was heading to mainland Ecuador and the Amazon in a couple days while she was staying put in the islands for three weeks of vacation. She introduced herself to me while we waited for the boat's dingy. Things were starting to smell like the cancellation of my Sunday ticket back to Guayaquil.

And sure enough aromatic turned ambrosial when she stripped down to her snorkel gear -- think Jessica Alba, Into the Blue. As thought provoking as our initial chat concerning the endemic ecology was I would be lying if I claimed the remainder of our interactions didn't consist of me visualizing scenarios for getting her from scantily to un with respect to the varieties of clad. The unrestricted angles, afforded by the weightlessness of water, with which to view a body in motion, while said body dove to inspect a sting ray, impaired my lucidity. I think it's still impairing my lucidity. But at least the water was clear! I narrowly avoided a faux-pas on the boat ride back, noticing some foot on foot action between the two. At some point on their scientific investigations, isolated from civilization, one can only assume... but being the scientist types they were distant and ambiguous long enough for me to decide what restaurant I would recommend for dinner.



Maybe it was the knowledge that I could outswim the ten other, somewhat corpulent, snorkelers twenty meters behind me, maybe I had come to accept with zenity the shark as my fellow earth-creature (yeah right). But when that Saturday I saw the white-tipped reef shark swim across my field of vision, this time, I was chill. She or he was one of four I swam with that day, assuming none were repeat encounters.

At one point our guide yelled that there were eagle rays to be seen and I shot over to his call, lucky to have heard it. And there they were, two monsters, swimming wing to wing, gliding through space. And finally being a swimmer came in handy as I plunged down a couple, then a few, then ten meters, to swim alongside them, their whip tails nonmenacing. They were gradually descending; we were past the coral encrusted shoreline, going down over a sandy hill that made up the base of the island. We got far enough out that nothing else became visible, just a spacious fog on all sides, the sun's soft glow above. And so that's where I left them, my powers extended. Tranquilo is the word they use in Peru for such situations - as I rose to the surface they flew gracefully into the fog.

I don't know what shark species I ended up being surrounded by that morning. It couldn't have been young Galapagos sharks (the sharks, as I found out later, that will eat you), because the killer's long dorsal fin is quite distinct and they are averse to shallow coves. Nurse sharks appear to frequent the region and exhibit a similar affinity for low waters, but there was no mention of them on any tour or any Galapagos related material I could find.

In all likelihood they were brown-tipped reef sharks, the darker version of the more common white-tipped, coming into the cove for their morning snooze, being nocturnal hunters, and hopefully with full bellies! They had let me go, their encompassing most likely happenstance. After I raced back to the safety of the beach that morning I asked myself what the chances were that they were really dangerous. Sure, I could take the trip an hour back to town and look it up, to return at some later time. Or I could wake up, think straight, and make a reasonable calculation regarding the absence of danger. So that's what I did. At a bit past nine I plodded back into the cove's waters, made my way back to that smallest of inlets, and looked down at the napping shiver.