The Galapagos: June 12th, 2005

We got to the dive/snorkel shop at the agreed upon time of 7:30am, but they weren´t there. Punctuality isn´t a prerequisite for business here, but the owner of the shop showed up after about fifteen minutes and got us onto the boat that he´d hired after we spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get flippers for me that fit. I wear 15; the biggest size he had was 11. I grimaced and made do.

Our boat driver, Luis, a handsome dark hispanic, spoke not one lick of English, but was very enthusiastic and did his best to give us the lowdown of the highlights along the way to our destination. My embryonic Spanish was strained to understand the majority of his discourse. Nonetheless, he did well enough that I understood most of what he tried to get across. He showed us where Darwin and the Beagle first arrived and came to port there at the island of San Cristobal. The coastline was comprised of black volcanic rocks which were apparently bleached white in certain places. I asked Luis and he confirmed my suspicions: centuries of birdpoo had coated them like paint.

The boat ride was about fifty minutes and we went out to a gargantuan rock formation about a mile off shore. It was 300 meters long and split in two, the sixty foot gap separating the 100 meter peak from an 85meter peak, four-fifths of the way to one end. It was covered in bird offerings as well and the birds were specks circling near the top. But for the break it reminded me of the rock of Gibraltar. Luis slowly puttered around the rock, which I believe he called "sleeping sea-lions" after the many we saw piled on ledges basking in the sun.

Once we´d made our way around, Andrew and I weren´t quite certain what was going to happen next, but we soon figured out we were supposed to start snorkling there in the canal and follow the path around that he´d taken us on.

It was with a minor sense of building trepidation that I put on the flippers and mask and went over the side. My courage had not been helped when I picked out the word "tiburon" from the various creatures Luis said were in the water there. I asked him if it was okay to swim with sharks and he laughed, saying "it's not the Mediterranean!" Having been scarred by Jaws at an early age, I've always been a bit reticent about open water. Nonetheless, in I went.

I couldn't see a thing there in the center of the canal because it was so deep, but as I got near the rock faces the world underneath came into focus. The water was clear, which was startling for me having mostly experienced the Atlantic there on the east coast. Fish, sea anemone, and various small creatures flitted and scrambled along as I swam by. I was careful to keep a three foot minimum distance from the wall, as the barnacles and other organisms growing on the rocks would have torn me to shreds.

After fifteen minutes or so, something moving out away from the rock caught my eye. It was just on the barrier of what I could make out, perhaps 30 feet away. I turned towards it, focused, and got my flimpse of a Galapagos turtle swimming. I pulled up to call Andrew over, and as I waited I watched the turtle lazily swim. Unfortunately, Andrew´s mask was foggy and he couldn´t make it out and the turtle was going out to sea. We headed back to the rock.

We passed the area where the sea lions were swimming and I mimicked their bellow, which did nothing more than cause one bull to lift his head, look at me, and then go right back to sleep, though the bellow had caused Andrew to yank his head out of the water to figure out where the howling sea lion was.

Shortly after that, as we were turning beyond where the rock wall would block the sun, a hammerhead shark, perhaps five to six feet long, slid by fifteen or twenty feet below me. My heart raced and I surfaced to tell Andrew. He nonchalantly said we should keep going, so I swallowed my fear and kept swimming. I did keep my arms pinned to my body so it wouldn´t get an arm if it bit me.

We´d gone perhaps twenty more feet when I saw a fleet of hammerheads (6-8) down just at my limit of vision. That was it. I told Andrew, gave the thumbs up to Luis (who´d been following us in the boat), and skidaddled back to the boat. I was not happy. We got back in the boat and I explained to Luis about the sharks. He laughed and said it was no reason to worry.

We sped along from there to a cove where Luis told us the baby sea lions swam. Again, he drove us along our swimming route, showing us the sea lions and the black iguanas, which matched the color of the rocks exactly, and thus making them very hard to see, as they sat perfectly still facing the sun as though in prayer.

When Andrew and I got back into the water, I wasn't nearly as perturbed as the water was only about fifteen feet deep and I could see well. We meandered along for a time and then the sea lions came to play. At first the babies, three to four feet long, darted around us, coming directly at us before bolting away. Soon the parents came by, doing much the same as the babies, though at a much slower pace. There were eight to twelve sea lions between and around us as we languidly swam/drifted, going about us in a fashion that brought to mind images of biplanes dogfighting.

Finally, they lost interest in us and wandered off somewhere. Our other big glimpses were a manta ray and a flittering school of tropical fish. We got back in the boat and Luis took us back to San Cristobal. We were happy and felt we got our money´s worth.

Now In Equador: June 10th, 2005

Well, I´m alive for the time being, and in another country to boot. Tomorrow Andrew and I fly from Guayaquil (Southern Equador) out to the Galapagos. The highlights of the trip so far:

Day 1:
1. On the way to the airport in DC, Andrew notices that the itinerary has us flying into LaGuardia but then flying to Peru out of JFK. Minor Panic ensues.

2. The ticket counter in DC tells us that we don´t have electronic tickets and that they´re going to charge us an extra hundred dollars for a lost ticket application. I ask to speak to the manager, who then tells us that we have to buy whole new tickets at the current rate (twice as much as the lost tickets). Major Panic ensues. The ticket counter man talks to sales and works out so that we only have to pay for the 100 dollars. We gleefully do so. Afterward Andrew posits that the manager just did a standard ploy of scaring us so badly that we were happy to get screwed over only by 100 dollars (I´ll be having a nice chat with the airlines when I get back).

3. We drink a pint of beer by the gate.

4. We drink (I guzzle) a beer on the plane (gratis...the first thing to go our way on the trip).

5. Getting off the plane in NY I panic when I can´t find my passport. Andrew is already down an escalator when I stop to search myself. He begins to come up steps when I find it and yell out, ¨Stay Down!!!!¨, which, it turns out, is NOT the thing to yell in an airport in NY. The woman next to me turns bleach white and gasps. I realize what I just did and apologize and then hot-foot it out of the airport.

6. We pay some guy $45 to get us from LaGuardia to JFK lickety split.

7. We drink two beers in the lobby of JFK, then go through security, where we, along with all the other caucasians on the flight are rigorously searched. By the gate, we drink another beer.

8. Lan Chile turns out to be the best airline that we think we´ve ever flown on. We were no doubt influenced by the pretty stewardesses and the fact that we were on the emergency exit aisle (more leg room).

9. Touch down in Chile. I discover that my duct tape, hatchet, and pocket knife were stolen (Semper paratis). My K-Bar was not stolen.

10. The drive through Lima to the hostel was amusing and terrifying. Lima reminded me of Iraq (well, that and the other third world countries I´ve been to) in that there was trash everywhere and all the cars from the 70s are flying all over the roads, which didn´t really have lanes. I had a seatbelt. Andrew didn´t. I asked the taxi driver when the sun comes out. He told me that it doesn´t come out during the winter in Lima. I´d forgotten that it was winter there since it was 66 degrees. The locals are bundled up.

11. After getting the room square and setting out to explore the city, we are immediately accosted by urchins who polish our boots. We laugh at the fact that we´re being swindled. The polishers try to extort money from us, which we´re happy to comply with since the exchange rate there is ridiculously in favor of the dollar. Eventually I tell them ¨No!!!¨and they skidaddle, thrilled that they bilked $5 from us.

12. Mostly drinking for the remainder of the night plus a cheap meal.

Checking In and Checking Out: June 7th, 2005

Well, the last few days/ weeks have been rather hectic and that trend will apparently continue for the foreseeable future. Upon turning 26 two saturdays ago, I drove up to the mountains where I sequestered myself at my pop's place to study for the LSAT. Having very little time, and the cold front that swept through bringing copious rain, meant that I stayed boarded up in the kitchen house, cramming my head full of helpful techniques while I poked and prodded as much heat as I could get out of the old woodburning stove. I got back to Charleston last Saturday and continued my studies, though I did take the time to blow the head off of a copperhead that I accidently ran over in the driveway. Fortunately, Pop, who was with me since we'd just come back from eating Mexican, wasn't aware that was my first confirmed kill or he no doubt would have tried to bathe me in its blood (a standard rite of passage for newly minted deer hunters) and I no doubt would have run screaming, wailing about venom getting in my eyes.

I took the test yesterday at the College of Charleston. I'm feeling cautiously optimistic at this point. Hopefully I do well enough that I can get USC to pony up some dough. I find out near the end of the month what the results are. All that being said, the big news is that I got out of the test and immediately drove the five hundred miles up here to Washington DC, where I am staying until my friend Andrew (we did our Artillery training together in OK) and I fly for Peru tomorrow. Three weeks (til June 30th) in a third world paradise are just what the doctor ordered, I believe, though hopefully he only ordered bouts of binge drinking, cheap travel, beautiful scenery, and friendly locals, and not an uprising of Tupac Amaru or Shining Path, or a ransom kidnapping, or a stabbing, shooting, mugging or even plain old pickpocketing (all of which I bring up solely to torment my beleaguered parents... kisses, mom and dad). At any rate, even with coca production up three hundred percent so far this year, Peru hasn't gotten a travel warning from the State Dept yet, so I think we're in the clear. Besides, if they really want Americans, why would any baddies want to mess with two athletic (looking) young men, when they can just grab a group of spoiled, obnoxious sorority chicks, or an overweight couple in tacky t-shirts walking around with their faces buried in a map? Oh yeah, I'm taking a hatchet and a k-bar (so that you know what did it when I email that I accidently stabbed myself at some point during the trip... me and sharp things aren't friends).

I hope everything is doing well out there in y'all's necks of the woods and hopefully the next time y'all see me it will be in person and not on a hostage videotape being aired on CNN.

I Thought This Was a Vacation

My first week of "unemployment" has been a Dickensian glimpse into what my post-collegiate career would have been like had I not gone into the Army. As my degree in Classical Studies has as much utility in today's world as underwater fire prevention, I would have no doubt had to resort to scrambling for bad jobs. Well, I've had nothing but bad jobs since I've landed on Terra Caroliniana.

I spent two days "visiting" my buddy, Dewey, which turned out to mean that he handed me a paint brush and told me to get to work. Two rooms and a few million brain cells killed by fumes later, I was adroitly booted back to Charleston where today my father had me rake the pasture (yes, pasture, not yard...he's got three horses grazing out there who think there's nothing funnier than to plop a pile onto a freshly raked mound of pine straw as I get the wheel barrow) and then dig an irrigation ditch. I have the rest of the ditch to look forward to tomorrow, along with chain- sawing fallen trees and anything else the bionic old man (two new hips) points for me to do.

They say there's nothing like doing something you don't want to do to help you figure out what you want to do. I don't want to do manual labor. That being said, apparently, I'm very useful with home improvement projects when I go to visit people. If y'all have anything you need done, just make sure to have beer on hand and be prepared to deal with whining.

Glimpses of Last Night's Party (ie What I Remember)

On the way to the party my buddy mentioned we were supposed to bring food, but that it was okay that we weren't since we were single guys. We stopped off at post to buy liquor and while there I sprung for a box o' chicken anyway. It's very classy to show up to a party with pretty people and fancy hors d'oeuvres carrying plastic bags with cheap vodka, cheaper bourbon, and greasy fried chicken. We got moderately snooty looks and many laughs for our contribution, but, as most of the other food had not been cooked and it was already 8pm when we arrived, the chicken vanished within minutes.

While talking with a fellow South Carolinian by the front door of the apartment (it opens into the living room) the buzzer rang and nine people came in. I did the standard shaking hands, smiling, saying my name and pretending to remember theirs. Then I went to where I put my coat, got my notepad out and affixed the following note to my chest:

"My name is ANDRE. I've probably forgotten yours. (It's the booze.)"

All the people whose names I already knew thought it was a hoot. The rest? Not so much.

I spent the majority of the party drinking out of my stein (three kegs of wonderful German beer kept the party running smoothly) and telling the same three stories to fifteen people (2 amusing anecdotes and then future plans). The only exception was a gargantuan (6 feet tall) pregnant woman whom my buddy invited me over to insult, being that she was from Oklahoma and I have a well tested tirade on the evils and misfortunes of that windy hellhole.

At about two in the morning, shortly before we were to leave (and quite a few steins of wonderful German beer down the gullet), I apparently thought it was a terrific idea to carry around a weightlifting dentist's wife caveman style. Then I spanked her in the kitchen, laughed my greatly inebriated head off, bolted to get my coat before her husband (or she) could kill me, and waltzed out the door with our ride.

Yes, I'm adapting to being a civilian quite nicely I think.

Ladykilling

The other night I was out with friends; well, as usual, I was the third wheel while my buddy Chris tried to work his magic with a stunner. There I was, several stiff drinks into the night, chatting along amicably with the impossibly tall and well proportioned (ie long legs, tiny waist, big hoo-hoos) red head, when I casually called her Stacy.

A look the likes of which I haven't seen before, namely a blend of amusement, anger, consternation, and disbelief, flashed across her face as she curtly informed me, "It's Tracy."

As any man should do in that situation, I chuckled, let out a groaning "ooooohh", and calmly polished off my drink. The smirk vanished from my face as I told her, "It's just that you remind me of my friend Stacy who died last year," and gazed wistfully into some unforseen distance.

"Really? I'm so sorry," she said, obviously concerned as she leaned in and touched my arm to lend emotional support.

I kept up the charade for approximately three tenths of a second before I chortled, shook my head, and admitted, "No, not really."

She playfully punched me in the rib, which not so playfully hurt like hell since I'd bruised it playing football a few weeks earlier, and we continued flirting and chatting well into the night.

The only moral of this story that I can find is that it is obviously best to do whatever possible, no matter how heinous, to distract a woman, well beyond your means, if you somehow forget or butcher her name.

Boring But Pleasant

As of today I'm officially a vagrant, and thoroughly, thoroughly pleased I must say. Concern about the move had be driving me to a tizzy lately, but now that I'm living out of a backpack (the one I'm taking to South America next month with Mr. Exnicios) and sleeping on a friend's floor I feel gooooooooood... at least until the next thing comes along for me to freak out about. That being said, I'm not too sure what that could be, since today I also paid the bill that had been so long overdue that a German arrest warrant had been issued for me (I didn't realize I hadn't paid a bill when I went to Iraq). Nope, for the most part, until the inevitable disaster hits me (as it always does) I'm just focusing on growing my hair out and looking forward to the 14 days when I can set foot on SC soil again.