Pandemic in Paradise: Galapagos Edition
The Galapagos Islands are absolutely insane.
I can't stress this enough: absolutely put it very high up on your bucket list.
There are two common considerations about travel to the Galapagos that can unnecessarily put you off:
Getting there is very difficult/expensive
Once there, you have very limited options with flexible budgets for tours and activities
These were both initial considerations of my own, and #2 really had me on the fence, when I started to read about how the cruises worked as a scuba diver, and how expensive the day tours and dive trips are.
Firstly, flights from Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, to either San Cristobal or Baltra Island, the two main points of entry, can be as low as $200 CAD round trip. Flights to Ecuador are reasonably priced from North America as well. For a trip like this, I would definitely recommend spending some time on the mainland first, and then a week at least in the Galapagos. If you pick your flights well, you can get to the Galapagos from North America under $1000 CAD round trip.
As for tours, they are definitely expensive, and there is no way around that. A three tank scuba day trip will be $160-200 USD range. Snorkelling and wildlife tours are $100-130 USD. Cruises can represent good ‘value', because you are packing a lot in, and include food and accommodation, but they are definitely not cheap. Where I was pleasantly surprised was in how much there was to see and do without paying for a tour. I did one day of diving, and one wildlife/snorkelling tour during my 7 days, and would have gone for one more at the end in search of penguins if the park hadn’t shut down, along with all tours, although that wasn’t really necessary.
Accommodation was totally reasonable: decent AC rooms with ensuite for $30. Food was excellent, and varied significantly in price based on quality, and there was always the “menu del dia” (Menu of the Day), served both at lunch and dinner, that included soup, rice, meat, dessert, and juice for $4-6. Not dirtbag backpacker cheap, but held up well for value considering the locale.
There was plenty to do walking or by bicycle from the three main tourist hubs of San Cristobal, Puerto Villamil, and Puerto Ayora, and the wildlife really is so abundant that simply wandering around between nearly empty beaches lead to plenty of cool experiences with giant tortoises, marine iguana, or native birds. The town’s waterfronts are covered with giant Sea Lions flopping and belching their way around to a constant crowd of entertained spectators.
Anyways, like I said, the Galapagos are insane, and I highly recommend a visit to anyone and everyone. And invite me, as I would go back in an instant and stay for longer, and actually bringing my surfboard next time, which I had left in Guayaquil (and happens to still be there…).
Beautiful pathways connect the various sites adjacent to San Cristobal town
I hopped off the plane in San Cristobal to one of the cleanest, well organized towns you will find in any country, let alone a place like Ecuador. You can tell how much financial support goes into maintenance, as the entire area is essentially a national park. I quickly found a hotel and set off to explore the area on one of the main trails starting from the townsite.
Along the trail just outside San Cristobal town
The above video sums up the Galapagos experience. Roughly 2 hours after I landed, following a 30 minute hike outside of town, I found myself on a deserted beach; a sea lion playing in the waves, as a marine iguana casually strolls by. It’s hard to put into words, but it was a completely surreal experience.
I booked my first tour for the following day to travel by boat to a small island off San Cristobal that has a large colony of local legends, the Blue-Footed Boobies, Great Frigatebirds, along with some snorkelling. The wildlife truly is unperturbed by human presence, and makes for some ridiculously effortless wildlife photography.
San Cristobal town itself had many great restaurants and a beautiful waterfront promenade filled with a ridiculous number of sea lions. After dinner, grab a few Club beers, or a bottle of cheap rum and some coke, and hang out by the water and watch the insanity of hundreds of belching giant sea mammals grunt, flop, and roll around the boardwalk. I met another Canadian in town and we managed to entertain ourselves thoroughly with this practice every night.
The next day I had booked a scuba dive to the legendary Kicker Rock. I was trying not to get my hopes up, but was told this was a common place to see Bull Sharks, turtles, and even Hammerheads.
Boy was I not disappointed…
Here is a video that includes footage from this dive, along with other snorkelling shots during my Galapagos adventures.
It was time to head off and explore the other islands, and my plan was to spend most, if not all, of the rest of my stay on Isabella Island, which has the smallest of the three main tourist hubs, while being on the largest island. I was able to land a discounted flight between islands to avoid the full day of bumpy boat travel that was the alternative, and so by breakfast the following day, I was walking down the beach of Puerto Villamil, typically just called “Isabella”.
This place was absolute paradise. Essentially just a few dirt roads with one main strip along a kilometres-long pristine sandy beach, the area was again filled with tame and fascinating wildlife, set on the backdrop of what often felt like a nearly deserted volcanic island.
I was in love.
Unfortunately, as is quite often the case, the relationship was “complicated”, as the world was falling apart around me. Things were starting to be noticeably different in Ecuador. The entire country shut down all bars, though restaurants remained open. Messages from friends and family back home were starting to sound a lot more concerned about my current situation. On my second day on Isabella, March 15th, I received a message from Air Canada to say that my flight home on the 19th had been cancelled. From what I was reading, that was likely one in a larger wave of cancellations that would very quickly include all Air Canada flights out of Ecuador back home.
I was officially stranded.
Posting on Facebook about my dilemma, I was made aware of a very similar account, albeit fictional, described in a book by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Slaughterhouse Five, Cats Cradle). The book tells the story of a small group on a Galapagos cruise who is shipwrecked during a global financial crisis and subsequent global pandemic.
From Wikipedia:
Galápagos is the story of a small band of mismatched humans who are shipwrecked on the fictional island of Santa Rosalia in the Galápagos Islands after a global financial crisis cripples the world's economy. Shortly thereafter, a disease renders all humans on Earth infertile, with the exception of the people on Santa Rosalia, making them the last specimens of humankind. Over the next million years, their descendants, the only fertile humans left on the planet, eventually evolve into a furry species resembling sea lions: though possibly still able to walk upright (it is not explicitly mentioned, but it is stated that they occasionally catch land animals), they have a snout with teeth adapted for catching fish, a streamlined skull and flipper-like hands with rudimentaryfingers (described as "nubbins").
Needless to say, I was intrigued to see how things played out, and whether I was the child of some Vonnegut prophecy for which the future of mankind depended.
The deranged look of a man preparing himself to repopulate the Earth
My flight off the Galapagos on the 18th was still available, and so my plan was to catch that flight back to Guayaquil, and hope for the best there. In the many hours spent on my phone sorting through alternative flights home, I was not seeing many options. So I did my best to enjoy myself while I was there.
Rampant Isabella Bike Thieves
Lookout view back to the town of Puerto Villamil
The tours had shut down, and the National Park was slowly closing their sites, but there was still some amazing walks and bike rides, great snorkelling right in town, and the beach was a place you could just sit and do a pretty good job of completely ignoring the problems of the outside world, at least for a while.
Initially, it felt like if I were to get stuck somewhere in the world, this was the place to be.
Each day, more services were closed, to the point where restaurants were starting to do pre-ordered take-out meals only. The grocery stores were starting to run out of supplies, all tourist sites were now closed, and so options for activities was now significantly limited.
It was time to try to leave.
Unfortunately, travel to the closest airport started off with a two hour boat ride to the town of Puerto Ayora on Isla Santa Cruz. From Puerto Ayora, a one hour bus or taxi takes you to the North end of the island, where a 20 minute water taxi ran across to ANOTHER island where the airport actually resided. A final 20 minute bus ride dropped you off at Baltra Island Airport. Not exactly an easy spot to pop by to see if you can catch a flight on standby.
The first step was the two hour chaotic rollercoaster of a water taxi to Santa Cruz Island, so I booked my ticket and set off for the dock. I met a Belgian guy, Joris, on the boat, who was staying at a good hostel in town, so I followed him back and we discussed an exit strategy, as he was in a similar situation. Further attempts to call the airline and visit their office in Puerto Ayora were unsuccessful, so I was ready to abandon the early exit and wait an extra day for my scheduled flight on the 18th. We grabbed dinner and had a traditional Galapagos post-dinner “drink rum and watch sea lions belch at each other” with a Canadian guy Joris had met previously. Fairly stressed we called it early and went back to our rooms to crash and try not to look at the same list of useless cancelled flights repeatedly.
Just as I was drifting off, Joris came and banged on my hostel room door. He had just received a message from a local guide he had met previously that said the local government had decided to shut down the airport at the end of the following day for a 14-30 day quarantine period, and so the last flights off the island would be on March 17th. Joris had just booked one of the last flights available, and when I checked, the Avianca website showed a single seat left for $400 USD, which I resentfully purchased.
It ended up being the right move, as we were able to successfully depart the Galapagos back to the mainland, as more shutdowns occurred for more services. Most flights were cancelled on the 18th, and our Canadian friend ended up stuck for over a week, including multiple long failed trips to the airport to catch standby flights.
When we arrived, Joris and I managed to find a decent hostel in Guayaquil which would be our new home for the next five days, as we watched the departure list out of Guayaquil International show a depressing wall of red “cancelado”. The mayor of Guayaquil was apparently a bit of a renegade, and although the national government and flight control were giving the go ahead for inbound and outbound international flights, the locals apparently felt otherwise. The mayor even went so far as to fill the airport runway with the local police department’s fleet to keep an inbound Spanish flight from landing.
Photo from the cockpit of the inbound Spanish flight
Of course, everyone else in the hostel was in the same boat, which lead to quite an interesting dynamic. There was drama, there was binge drinking, and there was chess. Moments of fun and relaxation in between mostly stress. Guayaquil was on a curfew outside of 10am-2pm, which was a pretty tight window. Our neighbourhood was pretty rough, with most businesses boarded up, and a high crime rate, so to minimize outside contact, we collected shopping lists and teamed up to cook together in groups.
It’s interesting to see how a group of completely unrelated humans can bond together in these types of situations. In all, everyone handled things super well, and it ended up being a great experience in and of itself. We scheduled group activities, workshops, music jams, etc., and generally kept ourselves entertained.
In the end, my constant monitoring of the airport’s departures list paid off. The only flight to successfully leave Guayaquil International that week was a relief flight sent down empty from Miami. They were running another the following day, and so I jumped on grabbing a seat, under the assumption that I could likely find a flight from Miami to Vancouver fairly easily. This ended up being the right call, as the only Canadian repatriation flights that ended up flying from Ecuador departed from Quito, which would have been very difficult to travel to, based on the lockdown and travel restrictions domestically.
So I hopped in an Uber and made my way to the airport, where I followed a heavily armed personal escort to my gate.
My Saviour
Miami was making international news at the time, as it was the hub for many young idiot spring breakers unabashedly flaunting COVID restrictions. The contrast between the military lockdown and control in Ecuador, to the “business as usual” attitude in Florida was extremely apparent as soon as I departed the plane. There were few, if any, signs that a global crisis was underway. No interrogation of symptoms at US Customs or elsewhere. No masks, no sanitizing stations or signage. Just plenty of ignorant revellers, content in their belief that this “flu” was just like any other, and no cause for alarm or unnecessary precautions.
The remainder of the trip home was wonderfully uneventful. There were no long processing lines, Canadian customs was a breeze, though they did at least have some COVID-related symptom questions, and instructions on the mandatory 14-day quarantine I was about to settle into.
March 22nd - Reunited back home!
Mike Martinsen, who had borrowed my truck and helped out with Nootka while I was away, was extremely helpful throughout this process. His concern about the deteriorating global state was apparent, and aligned with what was to come relatively early on. He met me at the airport with my truck, partner Audrey behind in their vehicle, and tossed me the keys and gave me a wave as we went our separate ways. Nootka expressed his extreme excitement on my return from the backseat of the truck, which my gracious Mother had filled with plenty of provisions to last well into my subsequent home staycation.
I had made it home, but it was definitely a strange homecoming. Instead of hugs and catching up over beers with friends and family, I was to settle down at home for 14 days of isolation, with a persistent stream of Zoom video calls as my only social outlet.
Relieved to have made it home, and that the world wasn’t dependant on me to mate with various Galapagos fauna in an effort to repopulate the Earth, I ordered a couple batches of beer brewing ingredients, busted out the Xbox, and settled into a simple life at home, watching the world spiral through a TP-deprived crisis state. Canada had reported 1,400 cases and 20 deaths on March 22nd, 2020. The US had 26,000 cases and 300 deaths, and was well on its way to prove itself as the “World Leader” in stupidity and inaction, lead by the stupidest and most inactive person in existence.
It was a bad time to have not much else to do than read the news…