Time to see some boobies!
05/10/2006 09:44  - (SA)  

Georgina Guedes

When I was a child, at the time when other little girls were sticking up posters of Tom Cruise in Cocktail, I harboured a deep and abiding passion for Gerald Durrell, the famous naturalist who wrote "My Family and Other Animals".

Aside from finding his long, English face handsome, and enjoying his quirky sense of humour, I thought that we would have lots to talk about. I come from an interesting family, and so did he, and we both have an interest in the wildlife with which we share this planet.

At around the same time as I was fantasising about walking on the sun-soaked beaches of Corfu with Mr Durrell, I also happened to watch a television program on the Galapagos Islands, although at the time I mistakenly called them The Archipelago Islands.

Two things caught my attention. The first was that this was a completely isolated ecosystem, so the animals living there are significantly different from their brethren elsewhere in the world.

The second was that, because the islands knew no natural predators prior to man, the animals are completely fearless and will allow observers to come within a couple of feet of where they are sunning themselves on the rocks.

This latter piece of information really captured my imagination. Most of my childhood naturalism had been thwarted by the inherent skittishness of animals. Here at last, was the chance to get close to creatures that weren't afraid.

I learnt, however, from quizzing my mother (after she worked out which islands I meant), that a trip to The Galapagos would take too long and be too expensive to be a realistic holiday proposition. I filed the idea under "When I'm big".

Realising my dream

Well, I'm not getting any bigger than I am now, and since my travels have brought me to Ecuador, it is only reasonable that I should seize this opportunity to jump on a plane and head for my long-dreamt-of islands.

Unfortunately, the travel agents in Quito have done their best to make it very difficult to get there within any kind of reasonable budget. Because the islands are a highly protected area, visitors have to have a guide with them, and to travel between the islands, obviously a boat is needed.

When you combine the elements of a boat and a guide, what you end up with is a cruise. This sounds very glamorous, and I'm sure it can be, but my boyfriend and I were determined to do it cheaply.

Every time I expressed my belief that a particular price was too high, and asked if the travel agent didn't have any economy boats to send us on, they all shook their heads sadly, and told us that we would be disappointed with an economy boat.

I felt that it was up to me to be disappointed or not, but they didn't seem to share this view.

After walking Quito flat looking for an economy tour, we eventually found one that was reasonably priced (for a Galapagos cruise). However, the agent had a strange pushiness about her that made me uncomfortable. I was also unable to figure out why sailing on the boat The Cormorant would be so much cheaper than on any other boat, since all the services were vaunted as the same.

When we were almost at the end of our tether, we found an unassuming little travel agency with friendly green walls manned by an Ecuadorian man, a French girl and a German girl.

They were initially somewhat disappointed that we had to conduct business in a language as boring as English, when they had such extensive international representation.

Our budget cruise

However, when we brought up the Galapagos, they were keen to help. They pulled out a file of boats, and quoted us a similar but slightly lower price for passage on the Cormorant.

When we expressed interest, our agent looked us straight in the eye, and gave us the low-down on the boat. It's a small boat. This means the cabins are small. My boyfriend in particular will be fairly cramped. The guide on board is the lowest level guide permissible in the park, but if we accept all these elements, since it is a bargain cruise, we won't be disappointed.

This is exactly the kind of honesty that makes a person buy a cruise immediately. We took ten minutes to think about it and then signed up. After all, we've stayed in a shoebox hotel in Hong Kong - how bad can this be?

In the flurry of activity, it took a while to penetrate that this is the realisation of a lifelong dream.

While I don't think it's possible that The Galapagos will disappoint, I have prepared myself for the possibility that our seemingly honest travel agent has lied to us and we will be setting sail in a leaky tin can and sharing a cabin with seven snoring strangers. Only time will tell.